The Teapot of the Orient
by notsosolemnly
Summary: In which everybody's going crazy over a magic lamp.
1. Shifters prefer nerds

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 1

At the Hogwarts Library, where most books were so old the pages practically crumpled at the touch and they had been mended with so much glue they made you a little dizzy, getting your nerdy fingers on a new book was like Christmas.

It was just wonderful, the way the pages stuck to the cover in a nice, whole bunch and didn't fall out of it, the way you didn't need a reference guide for interpreting withered print when you read them, the way no clouds of dust burst at you, triggering your asthma, when you put it down on the table.

Delicately running his fingertips over the fake leather cover of _Wish Granting Creatures and Items, _Remus could have spent hours just reading the title over and over, had he not felt slightly judged.

"Do you two want to be left alone?"

He hadn't heard Sirius arrive. James was with him, of course, and they were both twirling floo powder rolled in a bit of exam results amidst their fingers, every so often trying to blow smoke rings into each others' smoke rings.

He stopped with the cover fondling, slightly guiltily, and opened up the index page. Sirius offered him his floo roll. Remus put it out in the damp soil of a rubber fig that sat on the window sill.

"No smoking in the library"

"Since _when?"_

Remus gestured towards a no-smoking sign on the wall.

"Ever since that fire in the forbidden section yesterday. When I got here Madam Pince was still putting them up"

Speak of the devil. The sound of a squeaky cart alerted them that Madam Pince was approaching. A batch of signs rested on top of the batch of books. James hid his floo roll behind his back. Since it was practically in front of him anyway, Remus took it and put it out too.

"There's already a sign here too" she mumbled, and then sniffed in the air. "None of you are smoking, are you?"

"No" James and Sirius replied with remorseful honesty, and believing them, Madam Pince took her squeaky cart and carried on.

"Anyway, we didn't really come here to have our powder confiscated" said James. "In case you thought that"

"No" Sirius slammed his hands against the table. "But first of all, why don't you _ever _say anything?"

Utterly confused, and also suspicious and slightly nervous, Remus glanced up from his book.

"What?"

"Sure, you go on about potatoes that lurk under soil and entangle you with their sprouts and snogging cloak monsters and how Cabaret doesn't really qualify as a real musical, but when you meet somebody beautiful at the old people's home where you volunteer on the holidays, you don't say _a thing"_

Still utterly confused, suspicious and now also vigilant and a little bit scared, Remus thought that maybe if he just ignored them, they'd leave and find somebody else to mess with.

"Maybe we should just bring her in now" said James. Sirius disappeared for two seconds, and returned with- although definitely beautiful- kind of artificial looking girl with long, dark hair and sparkly pale eyes. Remus had never seen her before, nor had he expected to. As she emerged between them, fairly tall for a girl, she looked like their sister. This was definitely some kind of joke. Maybe she'd be to the fancy of most boys, but to Remus (who was regularly informed that he wasn't 'most boys' and was not rarely mistaken for a girl) she was just too much and the way she hopped up on the table and slowly crossed her legs and stroked her neck just oozed cheapness and stupidity. Did they in all honesty think he'd fall for this? He knew they loved to match-make but this was just going too far.

"Patricia was really anxious to meet you" said James. "Came all the way from Beauxbatons"

"Aye, you can call me Pat" said Pat, smiling and winking. "So nice to meet you again" She moved closer to the wall, and Remus tried to do the same except the library walls weren't like platform 9 ¾ so he remained perpetually in the same spot as ever, a spot he normally found to be very comfortable and cozy but now filled him with a desire to run. This was possibly their lowest and cruelest practical joke ever.

"Well, maybe we should… leave" said Sirius, but making no real effort to do so.

"Or we could go somewhere" Pat winked and reached out a hand to run through Remus' hair. "Rrrrruff!"

She was immediately hit in the chest with a bright light, and shifted into a gnome in a green suit before crashing into a wall and losing consciousness.

Sirius shook his head. "Every time a girl shows a little bit of interest in you, you immediately jump to the conclusion that it _has _to be some kind of shifter"

"It _was _a shifter"

"Janine wasn't a shifter" said James. "She ended up in the hospital wing for asking about your weekend plans"

"Well, Pat had trap written allover"

"That's kind of sexist, you know" said Sirius. "Assuming that every 'beautiful woman' is a trap designed to 'destroy the man', or something like that"

"But it _was _a trap"

"Doesn't make it not sexist. It may be true, but it is also sexist"

Since this was the first time James had ever seen a leprechaun, he went to poke it with his hazel, 11,5 inches, gryphon retina. He soon had company by a ebony, 11,5 inches, nymph follicle.

"I had no idea leprechauns could turn into women" said Sirius. "Why would they want to do that?"

"Wouldn't you, if you could?" James asked.

"True. Well, shall we wake it up?"

Suddenly Remus squeezed between them, carrying a large, empty sack that he opened up and folded down, willow, 10 inches, sphinx molar between the occupied fingers.

"That's not a good idea"

"Why not?"

"Because" He searched his mind for a plausible excuse as he threaded the sack over the leprechaun. "Waking leprechauns is _really dangerous! _ It's much safer to lock them up somewhere-"

So Sirius took the sack from him and turned it so the leprechaun fell to the floor. Then James cast _Salus Volatilus, _so it would wake up. The leprechaun blinked a couple of times before opening his eyes completely.

"Where am I?" he squeaked, heavily accented.

"Hogwarts" James informed him. The leprechaun bolted upwards, glaring up at Remus.

"Alright, laddie, you caught me. Where's the gold?"

Nonchalantly, Remus returned to the table at which he parked himself every morning and that was now safe again.

There was a cracking sound and the leprechaun vanished from the floor, and appeared again on that very table.

"I said where's the gold!" it demanded.

"You turned into a witch to get gold?" Sirius asked.

"I thought that if I turned into a beautiful witch, I could lure the answer out of him" the leprechaun confessed. "I really tried to get the type right, but I didn't have a whole lot to go on"

"You should have made her more cuboid looking"

"I told you" Remus told the leprechaun. "You can have the pot back once… you know"

"I can't grant you that wish, but I can grant a lot of other wishes. Did you look though the brochure at all?"

"You're supposed to grant any three wishes. It's in the rules"  
"Nobody's meant to find the gold at the end of the rainbow! It's not even a bow, you know. It's a circle, actually"

"Tough"

"You have to return it. It's the only pot we've got!"

"You really should have thought of that before you started lying!"

"Grrrr GIVE IT!" The leprechaun hopped up on Remus' head and started pulling at his fallow curls angrily. To counter this, Remus reached into the bag beside him, where he found a bottle of Tullamore Dew. He unscrewed it and splashed some drops in front of him. The effect was instant. The leprechaun hopped down from his head, chasing the drops of whiskey, catching some with his tongue as if they were snowflakes. A couple of drops were enough to make him sway and he could barely keep his eyes open.

"Hold me close kiss me I'm Irish" he slurred between hiccups before falling on his back. Snoring sounds emerged from his half-open mouth.

"I don't know why you're fussing" James put down the camera and reached into the paper bucket of popcorn Sirius' was holding. "You should know that those wishy-things are not that great" Crunch.

"Wishy-things?" Remus put the screw back on the bottle.

Sirius' let James have the bucket of popcorn and took the bottle of Tullamore Dew, unscrewed it again and poured it into his mouth as if it was Tullamore Dew.

"You know, you wish for eternal wealth for example" Chug-chug-chug. "and it turns out a bank lost all the money, that sort of thing. There's always a catch" Cough. "McGonagall has good taste. I want to tell her I love her"

"The pub's closed go home" James put down the popcorn and took the whiskey from Sirius and finished what was left, whilst simultaneously recording with the camera Sirius sinking down to the floor and passing out, as if it was the bottle that had kept him upright.


	2. Some unwanted competition

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 2

It seemed to Professor McGonagall that not all protective charms in the world could keep students from thieving in her liquor cabinet. Whenever she found something was missing and was sure she hadn't drunk it in her sleep, she could make a qualified guess of who the culprit was depending on just what was missing. Each house had their own set of trouble makers, as was often forgotten because they were always over shadowed. Those pretentious Ravenclaws, for example, they liked to enhance their studying experience with some white wine, and whenever the doormats of the Hufflepuff house felt like acting out, they could never handle anything stronger than Baileys. And the grumpy misfits of Slytherin, they really liked to wash down the pain with her Absinthe. But whenever her Whiskey was missing, she always made sure to roll her yatzy dice, put the numbers together and multiplied first by ten, and then again by four (temporarily forgetting that one of them was away at a funeral and related errands for a couple of days) to know how many points to subtract before she went to pass the judgment, asking professors she passed on her way if they were in need of free labour tonight.

And that's how the whiskey thieves came to spend the evening in the Care of Magical Creatures room, cleaning out salamander tanks.

"I don't get the whiskey hype" James swirled the high pressure hose around as if it was a lasso. "It's awful"  
"That's because you're a sissy" Sirius switched on the high pressure dryer, but switched it off again because the booming sound made his head feel like earth quake. "You just stick to your Baileys, sweetheart"

"There's nothing unmanly about Baileys. I bet you just pretend to like whiskey because you think it will make you cool"

"If you could pretend to like it, you would too. Clearly it can't be done. Sorry you're not as cool as you'd like to be, poppet"

They put their earmuffs back on. As far as detention went, this wasn't quite as tedious as they could be. It was more fun than Care of Magic class because they didn't have professor Grubbly breathing down their necks, telling them not to feed the monster books with m&m's.

The salamanders that had been placed in tubs while their tanks were being cleaned were now ready to be moved back into their now shiny glass dwellings.

A loud cracking sound, like that of a fire cracker, nearly made Remus drop an emptied tub in a tank, on top of the squishy lizards.

"Where's the gold?" the leprechaun Pat hopped up on the tub that was held upside down. "Give me the pot of gold, or… or…!"

Remus left to return the tub to the storage room, and then he picked up a tub with another kind of salamander. Pat followed him at his heel like an obedient but yappy-type lap dog.

"Or what?" The salamanders fell into the second tank like rain as Remus tilted the tub over it.

"Or you will be very, very sorry!"

"Look for it yourself"

Pat sighed. "I've looked everywhere! This has never happened to me before. I'm a good finder, normally. I was made Finder of the Year four years in a row, you know"

"Is that some leprechaun contest?" James asked, rolling the hose together.

"It was here at Hogwarts"

Sirius frowned disbelievingly at the gnome. "You went to _Hogwarts?" _

"Where else was I supposed to have gone to school?"

"Gnome academy?"

Pat frowned back. "That's _beastist!" _ he reproached, and spat on the floor. "You humans sicken me!"

"I'm quarter Veela so I can be as beastist as I want, you little goblin"

"Why you…!" Pat flung himself at Sirius, trying to choke him with his tiny fists. After snapping a photograph for his Beast Vs Beast photo collection, James pulled off the leprechaun and put him back on the floor.

"If you were made finder of the year four years in a row, finding the pot should be child's play" said Remus.

"You'd think so" Pat panted, and took a couple of deep breaths to calm his temper. "But it's like I've lost my finding mojo. First I can't find the Teapot of the Orient, and now _this!" _

He sank down on his little bum and put his small hands to his cheeks dejectedly.

James gave the camera lens a light polish. "What's this teapot of which you speak?"

"Well, it's not actually a teapot, but a lamp. Although I don't know how it generates light and you can use it as a teapot. I thought, if I had this teapot, then I would have the wish fulfilling powers of a mighty genie. But I just can't find it!"

Remus gave the last tub a shake, so an exceptionally clingy salamander would let go at last, and put it down.

"You leprechauns couldn't find a window in a greenhouse" So what if he had used that one before. It was his favourite.

The leprechaun got back up on his feet.

"You seem very confident in your finding abilities" he said.

Remus snorted, uncharacteristically smug, as he went to drop off the last tub in the tub storage room.

"I do ok" he said upon returning.

"You're head has really inflated ever since you found those couple of needles" said Sirius.

"Those were needles that looked like pine needles"  
"So how could you even tell they were actual needles?"

"Exactly"

"I suppose" Pat went on in a tone that clearly suggested hidden agenda. "finding an oriental teapot would be like taking candy from Dumbledore"

"No. Taking candy from Dumbledore is really hard"

"Oh. Anyway. If you should find that teapot and give it to me, then I will have greater wish fulfilling powers"  
"If I ever find one, why should I give to you?"

"Because if you don't, one of your three wishes will have to be: Please shield me from dark, leprechaun magic. You would have to sacrifice either world peace or a new ozon layer for that"

Pat snapped his fingers and then he was gone again.

"Where is this pot of gold anyway and how much gold is it to be exact?" Sirius asked, blinking away the pound signs that temporarily afflicted his eyes and made them go_ caching_.

"Somewhere where no one ever looks" Remus replied cryptically when suddenly the door to the terrarium room opened. In came a slightly overweight boy with the stubble of somebody with a shaky shaving hand and the light brown hair of somebody who wanted to save the environment by not showering too often. He was of the Hufflepuff house and he was called Dung and wherever he went looking for valuables, a loyal swarm of flies was sure to follow. He nearly tripped over his oversized over-robe as he went directly to Remus, carrying a pot of gold and looking very proud.

"You won't believe what I found in the Slytherin hygiene cabinet!" he said excitedly, waving some flies away from his face. "Behind the shampoo!"

Then when he saw James and Sirius, he just stuck his nose nonchalantly in the air.

"Oh. Hello. _Thieves!"_

"_You're _the thief" said Sirius, taking the hose from James, rolling it out again.

"I found that pirate treasure! You know what I went through to find it?"

"Do _you _know what _we _went through to find it?"

"Your nasty laundry" said James, shivering at the memory.

Dung swatted a fly that landed on his arm and wiped it off on his robes.

"It doesn't matter, because with this pot of leprechaun gold, eternal wealth will be mine. And also Mac" he sighed dreamily, as he envisioned Mac's legs. "And world peace. So who's the better finder _now, _huh? Huh?"

There were no more tanks to clean, so they were free to spend the remaining detention hour thinking about what they did. Remus however preferred to spend it doing homework, or redoing homework if he had already done all the homework. Sometimes he just liked to try and predict coming homework and do that, or perhaps do some old homework just to refresh the memory. He was never out of homework, because even if he had redone some homework in different languages, he lost bets so often he always had other people's homework to do as well.

"Who do you think put that pot in the Slytherin hygiene cabinet?" he asked as we went to sit down against the wall on the floor because there were no chairs and tables here. Dung followed.

"A leprechaun obviously"

"Why would a leprechaun put a pot of gold in the Slytherin hygiene cabinet?"

"What do I care about the inner workings of an Irish gnome? The point is, you Gryffindors can't even find school in summer time" Dung caressed the pot lovingly. "How's auntie, by the way?"

"The pot is mine so thanks for bringing it" Remus tried to take the pot from Dung, who held on to it stubbornly.

"No it's mine!"

"The leprechauns want it back"

"So what? Pots of gold are meant to be found"  
"Apparently they aren't and they only have one of them"  
"So that's it? A leprechaun said you can't have it so you'll just give it back? Aren't you Gryffindors supposed to jinx everybody that opposes you?"

"Find your own pot"

"You _just _said there's only one and I _did _just find it so don't try that with me, you… you Gryffindors can't even find…" Thinking, thinking.

"An arse in an outhouse" James suggested.

"A flasher at a playground" was Sirius' contribution.

"A strap-on in a convent"

"A soap in a prison"

It was astounding how Dung's physical strength grew when he was holding on to treasure. Remus saw no other way to make him let go than toss some cigarettes on the floor, and when Dung finally let go of the pot to pick up the precious smokes, he bagged the pot with the intent of finding a suitable hiding place once detention was over.

"Oh that's nice" said Dung, his speech muffled for all the cigarettes he had stuffed his mouth with. "Some loyalty you're showing, working against _your own cousin!"  
"Sssshhhh!"_

"And you call yourself a _Fletcher!"_

"No"

Lighting the cigarettes, Dung stormed out of the zoo, coughing as if his lungs hated him.

"You know where he'll never look?" Sirius asked, rolling the hose together again. "At a rehab"

"I know I've hidden plenty of things from you at rehabs"

"And I you"  
They paused in their thoughts. Since poker night in the staff room would last until long after midnight, they really didn't have to stay until their hours were over for permission to leave. Not that James and Sirius had intended to do so in the first place, but Remus thought that since he had to hide the pot anyway, he ought as well go to the library right now, and so he tried to fit _White Arts: Not just for hippies _in his bag, next to the pot that was taking up a considerable amount of space.

"So how about that lamp" said James. "Are you going to look for it?"

"I suppose I have no choice, if I want world peace _and _a mended ozon layer" Remus shrugged as he got up on his feet, having decided he could simply carry the book in his hand.

When they opened the door to leave, they saw that Dung hadn't gone further than just outside.

"When I was eavesdropping, I couldn't help but overhear talk… of a lamp" he said. Uninterested in commenting, the lads just passed by him,

"A genie lamp, correct?" Dung therefore continued, having to jog after them to keep up. "What do you need a genie lamp for, _and _a pot of gold? How much world peace do you really need?"

Still nothing, but Dung was persistent.

"So, are you going to Arab land or something?"

"If I have to" said Remus.

"Is it a particular lamp you're after or just any lamp?"

"Don't you have some pirate treasure to dig up?"

"Why are you so hostile?"

"Because you keep saying I can't even find a drunk at Christmas time!"  
"Alright. That was low. Come on, let's look together! It'll be just like old times! Remember when I said you'd never beat me in hide and seek? Well, you sure showed me that one time-"

Remus halted. "No. Because you will only want to use the lamp for your shallow wishes! And guess what? All those times we played hide and seek? I _let _you find me, because I got _bored _waiting!"

Dung gasped, unable to process this information. "What?"

"I was _faking it!"_

Dung hadn't even noticed he had followed them all the way to the tower. He backed, horrified, and his voice trembled. _  
_"You don't mean it"

"Good night"

The Fat Lady swung open and left Dung sadly alone.


	3. When in doubt ask Dumbledore

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 3

Whether or not he would have to go to Arab land, Remus still wasn't willing to do it in the middle of the week. And furthermore, Arab land was pretty large, it did cover all of muggle Middle East and wizard Middle East after all, so rushing anywhere without knowing more specifically where a lamp could be found was just, well, it was stupid. But to find out where to find a magic lamp, he just didn't know of any book that could tell him that, and Pince hadn't known either. And whenever books couldn't answer his questions, he always went to Dumbledore.

It was sometime after lunch and transfiguration didn't start until 20 minutes. The circular office was bright and tidy and full of books, some of which sprouted hands and wiggled their index fingers alluringly, saying eerily: _Reeeadd meee, reeeaad meeee!_ Another one said: _Help! I'm trapped in a book!_

A vase with colourful chrysanthemums lit up the room and filled it with flowery fragrance. A portrait sneezed.

Remus was tempted to sneak a couple of books into his bag (just to borrow them!) while Dumbledore had his back turned feeding Fawkes, but a portrait watched him like a hawk, as if it could read his mind. He didn't like portraits. They were prying gossips.

"The nearest genie lamp…" Dumbledore folded the opening of the sack of charcoal and put it back in the cupboard, making a note to self that he needed to get more charcoal, and sat down behind his large desk, leaned back and locked his fingers in his lap. "Most of them are in Arab land, of course. The Archemage of China has one. That was in the papers the other day. But he has probably used up all his wishes by now, so that genie is on holiday for another 100 years"

Bits of charcoal flew across the room as the giant bird feasted. Remus plucked one such bit out of his eye.

"Do you know of any genie that isn't on holiday at the moment?" he asked. "Or will be back from his holiday sometime soon?"

"One thing is for sure: if I knew of a genie that wasn't on holiday I wouldn't be the headmaster of Hogwarts!"

A breeze from the open window rustled some papers that were safely weighed down by a crystal bowl of acid pops. And it wasn't just the breeze that was looking to entertain itself. An odd-eyed white cat that listened to the name Twiggy was suddenly balancing on the windowsill, fixing it's eyes on the giant, charcoal eating bird, vaingloriously thinking it could easily take down a creature of fire over six times its own size. And although Fawkes was larger and stronger, natural bird instinct still rendered him afraid of felines and when Twiggy finally pounced, he darted around the room in panic, knocking down several brittle figurines, before escaping through the window and around the tower. And as soon as it had gone, Twiggy was bored again and after a quick rubbing of the self against furniture, she hopped up on Remus' lap and rolled into a bun.

"People talk about cat people and dog people" said Dumbledore musingly. "But nobody ever talks about bird people. Have you noticed?"

"Not really. What are bird people like?"

"Brilliant and a bit mad"

The door opened. Carrying a large wooden chest, professor McGonagall went briskly to the desk to empty its content. "The pearls are yours. For now"  
"You're a fish person, aren't you Minny?"

"I used to be able to keep fish in a tank, but now…" Head shake. "What's going on here, anyway?"

"What are fish people like?" Dumbledore opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish, but when McGonagall just looked at him blankly, he stopped. "Say, do you happen to know of any genie that isn't on holiday?"

McGonagall scratched Twiggy behind the ears and snorted. "If I knew of a genie that wasn't on holiday I wouldn't be teaching at Hogwarts, would I?" she laughed, heartily along with Dumbledore.

"That's what I said!" Dumbledore had to remove his glasses to dry his tears.

"God I hate this job!" McGonagall put her glasses back on.

"Minny, _not _in front of _students!"_

"I'm sorry, headmaster. I just wish more of them would take advantage of the schools' resources and see this time as a chance to grow and expand your knowledge, and not as some kind of punishment. But if there are just a few that put a little more effort into things than the required minimum, I'm happy" she paused, glancing briefly at the liquor cabinet, and her tone became softer. "But you know, in the end, every morning when I look over the first class of the day, and I see them peering at me with curiosity, I think… Thank _God _tonight is poker night"

She left Twiggy to inspect the liquor cabinet more closely.

"Let that be a lesson to _you!" _ Dumbledore pointed at Remus. "I used to mope and wonder: what's the point of it all? The answer: poker nights"

"You're absolutely right, headmaster" McGonagall passed the first glass of Sherry to Dumbledore, and poured another one for herself. "It's truly the little things in life that make it all worth it"

"That is not at all what I said. I said poker nights. Cheers" They clanged their tiny glasses together and sipped. McGonagall left the cabinet in the corner of the office and rested a hand on the chair on which Remus had been invited to sit.

"Anyway, did I ask why you're looking for a genie that isn't on holiday?"

"I assume it's because a genie on holiday isn't very useful"

"Mhm. Do we suddenly think we can _wish _our worries away?" McGonagall patted Remus on the shoulder.

"It's for a leprechaun, actually" Remus replied shortly.

"A leprechaun?" McGonagall sighed heavily, downed the rest of the sherry and put the glass down. "We've talked about this. What have I told you about collecting things and keeping them in cupboards? It's _not _safe, it can get _really _scary-"

"It came to me, ok? I was just asking, hypothetically…"

"Hypothetically, hm? I seem to recall, some 30 or 40 years ago when I was your age, the minister at the time had purchased one of those lamps in one of those flying carpet countries-"

"That's _racist, _Minerva!" reprimanded Dumbledore.

"No it isn't I much prefer to travel by carpet"

"That sounds a little dirty"

"Try to focus, headmaster"

"Maybe it's why you're still a spinster"

"I'm married _to the job_. My job is to scream at thankless children, why would I sacrifice poker night with you to have a boring husband on top of that?"

"A joke crossed my mind, but… minors in the room" Dumbledore sniggered at the joke he would just have to share later.

"Oh you're finally letting that stop you?"

"I'm touched. I love you too, Minny"

"Yes thank you but I digress. Anyway, so this minister had a magic lamp. It was all over the news. He was going to use his wishes to improve the country in all sorts of ways. Well, the thing about wishy-things is that there is _always _a catch. The smaller the wish, the safer but who wishes for something small, like a mars bar? A person is more likely to wish for a life supply of mars bars. So the minister wished for more jobs and a better economy. What happened? Higher prizes and no staff at the old folks home because now everybody could have the job of their dreams! He felt so bad for the damage he had caused society, he committed suicide, and in his letter he wished to be buried with it so nobody could use it to destroy their lives. So unless anybody dug it up, it's still there"


	4. The Hide & Seek Club

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 4

Slytherin played Ravenclaw that evening, so it was pretty much empty allover Hogwarts. The only people who didn't watch the game tonight were either nerds who'd rather spend the evening in the library or bed bound in the hospital wing. It was the perfect time to unleash a poltergeist in the Slytherin dungeons.

A poltergeist was surprisingly heavy for a flying creature. Thanks to the diversion the game offered the designated targets, James and Sirius could afford to put the cupboard down every once in a while to catch their breaths. The challenge didn't really lie in the weight, but in the way it tried to fly in every direction _except _the one they were taking.

"Maybe this is a stupid question" said Sirius. "But if a… You know the bird-in-a-plane thing?"

"Bird-in-a-plane thing? Of course"  
The cupboard was practically wrapped in duct tape like a mummy, and they both began to remove it, an act that quickly started to damage their finger nails.

"Is it flying, if it's inside a plane?" Sirius asked.

"If it's flapping its wings, it's flying" said James.

"Right… Why do I feel I phrased the question wrong?" Sirius shook an annoyingly tiny bit of tape off of his fingers. "It doesn't matter. I mean… If you weigh the plane, and the bird is sitting down, you get the weight of the plane and the bird combined. But if you weigh the plane and the bird is flying, do you get the same result?"

"Well… No"

"You sound very sure"  
"Don't try to confuse me, of course you wouldn't get the same result. I think… No I'm sure! I think…"

The cupboard wasn't just wrapped in things designed to keep it closed, but also in several post-its with: _'Don't open!', 'Don't think about it!', 'Go away!' _and the like in different variations and with varying degrees of rudeness written on them. Sirius ripped one such note off.

"You know what I think? He wants us to release it. Just look! Look at the desperation!"

"Well then we certainly should. I think it will be happy here, and I will be happy knowing it is here"

When they tried to pick it up again to bring it to the dormitory where they wanted to release it, the cupboard started shaking like mad. And so they put it down again, thinking that while releasing it in the common room would not be as funny, it would still be funny enough. Ripping off the thick layers of tape was very tedious and time consuming.

"What would you wish for if you had three wishes?" James asked, crumpling a bit of tape and dropping it on the floor.

"Eternal wealth…" Sirius counted on his fingers. "More wishes-"

"No you can't wish for more wishes"  
"Fine. The power to kill with a single thought and to be the fifth member of Queen. You?"

"To join the Kenmare Kestrels… Eternal wealth… And for this bloody bit of tape to get off my bloody hands!"

The bit of crumpled tape he thought he had dropped to the floor, had in fact just stuck to the other side of his hand. This was the clingiest tape of all clingy tapes. It was stickier than fly paper, and the fact that it also attracted flies further contributed to make a tedious experience downright unpleasant. And furthermore, the more you struggled against the tape, the more it ensnared you. They both looked like mummies themselves by the time they realized how futile resistance was.

"Ok now what?" Sirius asked, muffled by the tape.

"Hm… _Devils' snare, devils' snare…"_

"It's not a Devils' Snare. It's strips of fly paper"  
"_Strips of fly paper, strips of fly paper…_Then I can't remember the rest" James found the flies bouncing off the lenses a bit distracting and not helpful when trying to remember wordier charms. "Something with 'fun' and 'sun'. '_Not fun in the sun'. _Or was it: '_fun in the sun'?"_

"Depends on your definition of 'fun'" Sirius blinked away some flies. "There are kinks for everything"

"Can you buy tape like this in shops?"

Sirius managed to remove the tape from his mouth. "This is from the same roll of tape Moony uses to mend his books with, and I've never gotten ensnared by his dream journal. Clearly this was first wrapped around the cupboard, and _then _jinxed. Another case closed, my dear Watson" Then he started coughing because a fly got stuck in his throat.

"Thanks for the unhelpful deductions"

"You asked"

"But you failed to notice, my dear Watson, that if you look at the overall twirlyness of the strips of tape, you can tell this was done in much haste. This is very fortunate, it means that whatever magic is at work, it's not anything new or anything that required much preparation"

"Something old, well that definitely narrows it down"

A bright light emitted from James' right side and the tape unleashed them both. "I was right times two" he said, but didn't sound too proud over the fact that he had had to recall something from yesterdays' Transfigurations to solve this. It wasn't just patronizing, manipulating them with reversed psychology like this. It made it all feel like a trap.

"I suppose that was Second Degree Form Altering" said Sirius, shaking a bit of tape from his shoe. "I kept hearing in the back of my head that while I was being nagged at for napping"

Wands ready, they expected the poltergeist to hit them in the face like a hard wind when they opened the door, and so they squinted as if that would have protected them in such a scenario. But nothing happened, and when they dared to look inside the cupboard they saw that the walls were burnt, clearly a sign of a trapped ghoul, and yet it was empty except for a post-it that read: _'Don't touch this'. _

Quidditch wasn't the only game that was being played this evening. The hide and go seek club, which was an all- Hufflepuff club, had nearly gone through all the points. They occupied the various comfy chairs in their common room, eagerly waiting for the winner of the week to be announced. Quidditch nights were great for playing hide and go seek, because it meant that more hiding places were available and they were less likely to be kicked out of somewhere they weren't really allowed to be.

"And finally at the top, we have Bozo!" the leader of the club, Frank, scribbled on the flip chart. All the members clapped modestly, only barely drowning the sound of the crackling fire. Rita patted her friend on the back, but the Bozo looked as blank in the face as always.

A hand holding a quill shot in the air. "Hem hem!"

"What is it, Dolores?" Frank smiled gently at the toad-faced girl. His determination to find something about her that wasn't irritating was what made him the most exemplary Hufflepuff since Helga herself. That all Hufflepuffs were really nice was a common misconception. Certainly most of them aspired to be respectful and disliked unnecessary conflict and fighting, but the sweetness they especially directed at their fellow house members, and was the reason all other houses thought they were a bunch of weaklings, was really how they expressed that loyalty, for which they were more known than their amazing finding abilities. And they were quite happy people didn't know they were great finders and that the hat never brought much attention to the fact, because then the other houses would just want to take advantage of them.

The toad faced girl with the oversized glasses lowered her quill.

"I demand something is done about Fletcher for he _smells!"_

"That's mature! I wouldn't exactly touch you with a stick either!" Dung retorted, shaking a louse from his hand that had crawled there from his head.

"Badgies _please!" _Frank interrupted before things turned rude. "Remember the first rule of being a Hufflepuff!" He flipped the flip-chart a couple of times until he came to the list of rules. The first rule read very clearly: _Act really polite all the time!_

"But what's the point?" Rita asked, in a slouched position on the sofa scribbling on her school paper entitled: _'Who's snogging whom?' _"It's why people think we're complete pushovers"

"That's their problem. Being a Hufflepuff is like being the Scarlet Pimpernel. It was because people thought he was stupid that he was able to _find" _he paused rhetorically. "all those French aristocrats and save them. Let the other houses keep their points and trophies. We have the treasure"

"Speaking of treasure" said Dung, taking the pot of gold beside him and placing it on his lap, letting it speak for itself and awaiting expressions of awe and questions.

"Those look like chocolate coins" said a witch that sported a massive afro and wearing a necklace with all the symbols of the western zodiac.

"They're _not- _Wait" Dung picked up a coin to inspect more closely, making sure it couldn't be unwrapped. Then he made sure again by biting into it. "It's real. However real leprechaun gold is"

"That can't be leprechaun gold" said Dolores. "Leprechaun gold is impossible to find"  
"It's real I tell you!"  
"How did you find it then?" asked a strawberry blonde with rosy cheeks.

"I found it in the library"

"Why would a leprechaun leave a pot of gold in the library?"

"It didn't, that's my point!" Dungs' tone was tainted with impatience. "Listen, as you all know, the day of the big, international treasure hunt is approaching. It's going to be tough! The maps are said to be flakier than ever and the prize is the treasure chest of legendary pirate looter Captain Squidbeard the Hardworking!"

"What of it?" said Frank, leaning against the flip-chart. "The important thing is that we all give it our best. It's worked before"  
"We have always been the only team from Hogwarts, but this year I fear that won't be the case"  
"Who else is going?"

"What does it matter if we're not the only team from Hogwarts?" said Rita. "We're still the most experienced team"  
"I know, and of course we'll win provided everybody plays _fair. _There's _talk. _Of a _genie lamp"_

Even the fire chose that moment to die. The only things that lit up the common room now were the torches. The lazy smile on Ritas' thin lips faded slightly.

"I heard that, when I was waiting outside Dumbledore's office. They were discussing genie lamps"  
"So what?" said Dolores.

"I think that some Gryffindors will have a go at the treasure hunt this year, too" Dungs' tone had gone from impatient to dead serious.

"They can try but so what? Gryffindors can't even find a sheet at a Halloween party"

"I know, which is why they will cheat. They will use the lamp to wish for victory, I know it!"

Since the Quidditch game had just ended, and other students were expected to come barging in any minute now, and because he really wanted to start reading that book they were reading at the book club this week, Frank started dismantling the flip-chart.

"Why do you worry about this anyway?" he asked. "Anybody who cheats will be disqualified, and that's the end of that"

"It's not, if they use their next wish to not be disqualified"  
"I'm more concerned about that team from Jaguarspot in Brazil, personally" said Rita, also slowly preparing to retire to her dorm for the evening by screwing the lid back on her ink bottle. "They train by walking backwards to El Dorado blindfolded! Everybody thinks they will win this year"

"Well, like I said, the important thing is that we _do our best-" _said Frank, but was told to shut up by everybody else. Dung had intended to worry them all, and he had succeeded.

"If we had this lamp" said Dolores, wide eyed. "Then we'd win for sure"  
"You're not seriously suggesting we should cheat?" asked the girl with the afro.

"Why not? Better us than some pushy show-offs! And besides, I don't recall the rules specifically forbidding the use of wishy-things"

They were all tempted by the idea of winning through using an object that alone required superb finding abilities.

"They forbid unapproved aiding equipment" said the girl with the afro, seemingly finding the temptation a bit easier to resist than her fellow hiders and seekers.

"Yes. _During _the hunt. That they _find out _about"

And as much as the others hated to admit it, they were very tempted to give this kind of cheating a try, on their way to their dorms convincing each other and themselves that everybody probably did it.


	5. Not a very happy return

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 5

Peter did not like funerals and he was very relieved to be back at Hogwarts, because Hogwarts was just a little bit less scary than cemeteries. But just a little bit. He had never needed to get his head stitched together at Hogwarts, but he had been close a couple of times. The first thing he did upon entering the dorm was to throw the small, brass pot that hadn't fit in his small suitcase on his bed before he proceeded to unpack, as the horrors he had faced slowly but surely faded away from his immediate memory.

"How was the funeral?" Remus asked. Although he'd noticed that Peter didn't look as pink as usual, he was still more interested in the teapot. Peter fixed him with a gaze of terror.

"Horrible. I lost a piece of my brain"

"O… k…"

Pete sat down and swallowed. "Turns out my great aunt died long ago, and she was just taking a nap when they checked her pulse last week and proclaimed her dead. When mum ran a stake through her chest I got a piece of gut in my mouth" He lowered his voice to a weak whisper. "Do you think you can catch zombie-itis that way?"

Suddenly a treasure chest shot out from beneath Sirius' bed, darting across the room like a weaving spider on steroids and breaking loads of things. Several rays of blue light were fired at it until one such ray hit the chest right in the lock. The chest dropped, breaking a tank with a small hydra in it's' fall. A puddle of swamp grew on the floor, in which shards of glass glistened beautifully.

The door opened and two boys covered head-to-toe in green post-its saying '_Don't touch this' _entered, and whenever one of them tried to remove one post-it, two grew back.

"Great, the loot is all gooey" said Sirius, rustling over to the chest and tried to pick it up, but found it somewhat difficult, what with his hands being covered in thick layers of post its. He tried to rip a bunch of them off, but still the double amount grew back.

"Watch where you're stepping!" Remus put on some gloves and went to pick up the serpent with the multiple heads before James could turn it into mashed amphibeast, and placed it in the tank with the baby kraken, hoping dearly it didn't eat baby krakens.

"Well… I can't take life any more" said James and scorched the post-its off of him. Then he scorched the post-its off of Sirius, because he was too busy wiping swamp off the treasure chest with paper towels. When finished, Sirius reached under his bed for a crow bar with which he tried to bend the lid of the chest open.

"What do you think you're doing?" Remus asked, like he was still in the habit of doing although he knew it only yielded sarcastic answers

"I ask myself that question every night" Sirius gave ramming the edge of the crowbar under the lid another go, and pushed as hard as he could but still with no results.

"Stop that, there's a poltergeist in there!" Trying to take the crowbar from him proved to be an equally fruitless endeavour.

"You should have thought of _that _before you trapped it in my loot"

"If you didn't treat my cupboards like gag items I wouldn't have had to!"  
"Oh right, because it's _not 'gag items'_, it's _'research'_!"

As they fought over the crowbar, the treasure chest got nudged off Sirius' bed and fell down on the floor. When eventually Sirius won the fight over the crow bar and was quicker to pick up the loot from the floor as well, and when he realized there were places he'd much rather have post-apocalyptic looking, he took both items with the intent to go and open the loot in the office of some professor he didn't like. But because Remus didn't want to have his objects of research released before he was through with them, and certainly not among professors that didn't much approve of his at times perilous herding, he quite unwisely sent a flock of moths at Sirius to disorient him. The good thing was that he dropped the loot, the bad thing was that he dropped the crow bar so it landed heavily on top of the chest. The lid opened in a snap. Treasure items shot out of it like a stream, zapping across the room and breaking and knocking over just about everything. Tanks broke, shards of glass flew all over the place, water fell on electric devices, and things caught on fire. It was impossible to do anything in ways of defense when hundreds of rings, necklaces, coins and whatnot of varying size bounced around the walls. A crown broke the window and flew out through it, followed by the rest of the treasure, rendering the dorm post-apocalyptically calm. A mermaid brooch in jade flew solitarily after the escaping jewelry.

Holding what looked like a water gun, except it shot nets, Remus jumped out of the window onto the roof, chasing the escaped jewelry under mild swears. The quiet that followed made ears ring.

"Say, that's a nice teapot you have there, Wormtail" said James, as he plucked the last shards of glass from his shirt. "Where did you get it?"

"It belonged to my great aunt" Peter replied.

"That _is _a nice teapot have you lost weight?" Sirius yanked the teapot from Peters' non-resisting grip and whipped out a magnifying glass.

"Maybe they make teapots that look like magic lamps" said James. "That's probably not real"  
"Who would want a teapot this small?"

"A leprechaun?"

"Did your great aunt say if there was anything special about this teapot, perchance?"

"No" Peter replied. "She just told me to hide it"  
"_Well! _ Why don't _we _hide it _for _you?"

Peter remembered how his great aunt had threatened to kill him should he lose the lamp.

"I don't know…" he said hesitantly.

"No, no! We _honestly_ don't mind. No need to thank us"

The draft from the broken window rustled all lose papers, reminding James and Sirius that they had some escaped treasure they really wanted back.

The possessed jewelry resembled a swarm of very destructive locusts, messing up just about everything in it's' path. And they were much synchronized in their fast reflexes, dodging every compacted bullet of ghoul-net. Every area it passed ended up looking like it had been hit by a meteor, and what made matters worse was that students returning to their towers and dungeons from the game found themselves being strangled by pearls, stabbed by pins and having their skirts lift up by tiaras. This was one happy poltergeist. Fortunately it didn't linger anywhere.

It flew all the way to the staff wing, where most staff had their offices and where the staff room was, where poker night was held every night.

Trapping the jewelry with a net was as convenient in theory as it proved to be difficult in practice. The idea was that, since this was possessed matter in several pieces, a net could gather it all. But because it was possessed matter on steroids that liked to spread out quite a lot, it was very hard.

When the door to the staff room opened and professor McGonagall came out, peering into her empty wallet, the jewelry decided at last that this was a good time to gather in a nice bunch to prick and strangle her. Fortunately she wasn't wearing a skirt. Too stunned to react properly, and mildly intoxicated, she just tried to wave them off like they were mosquitoes. Several nets were cast, one of which hit the jewelry, the others of which covered McGonagall, making her look like a creepy bride. The netted jewelry fell neatly back into the open treasure chest. Remus closed the lid and placed the gun on top, awaiting judgment. McGonagall pulled the nets off of herself. Then she looked at the clock that hung above the door to the staff room. It was a little past nine.

"210 points" she said, numbers over three digits couldn't be subtracted. "No, let's make it 900. Detention every… When's the book club? Wednesdays? And… Well, I can't ban you from the library, but from now on you may only visit it during strict supervision. Do you think that's enough to get through to you?"

"Yes, professor" Remus could have died from the humiliation. Unable to even look her in the eyes, it seemed he would never get used to this.

McGonagall took the treasure and the gun. "And you have no idea how nice I'm being. Students have _died _because of inappropriate pets" she made a half turn, and then stopped. "I think I'll owl your mother right away. Off you go"

Consumed with guilt, Remus went back the way he had been led. He had barely turned around before suddenly there was a crack and confetti rained over him. He shook it out of his hair.

"Here" Sirius passed him the lamp. "You earned a mars bar"  
Remus returned the lamp to Peter and they all continued down the spiral stairs together.

"Remember when we said that we would have cake every time they owled our mums?" said James. "Whatever happened to that? Why did we stop?"

"Because I started to lose sight of my ribs, that's why" Sirius patted his ribcage lovingly.

"Like I keep telling you, if you gave Quidditch a chance…"

"It would probably be more comfortable on a fat arse"

Yanking the lamp from Peter a second time, Sirius could no longer resist rubbing it. A genie popped out of it and hovered before them with its eyes serenely shut.

"You wish is my command" it said.

"You mean, my _wishes _are your command"

"I only grant three wishes at a time. I have one wish left to grant from the last wisher. That wisher has been deceased for a long time now"

Well, in _that_ case, I wish for you to point me to a-"

"You have to be careful with how you phrase wishes" said Remus.

"One moment, please"

They turned their backs to their lamps and put their heads together to discuss appropriate ways to phrase the wish.

"What if you wish for a new lamp with a genie that isn't on holiday?" James asked.

"That's probably as bad as wishing for more wishes"  
"What if, you wish for it to show you to a genie that isn't on holiday?"

"It might show me a photograph or something"

They thought some more.

"Take you to one, then?"

"In what condition?" Remus asked.

"Alive, of course. In a normal, functioning and sane and living condition"

"What if you ask for directions to a working genie?" Sirius suggested.

"Why directions? Why not the location?"

"I don't know, because it will trap me in a lamp or something?"

"Directions… It could work… If you make it detailed directions, preferably in print"

"If the gentlemen have made up their minds" said the genie. "I have a plane to catch"

The gentlemen turned back their attention to the genie.

"I wish to know" said Sirius. "If you weigh a plane with a bird, but the bird is flying-"

James took the lamp from Sirius. "I wish for directions… No, I wish to know the location of a…" he looked back at the others, pausing to make room for objection should anyone have any, but nobody did. "No, directions is better, you're right. I wish for detailed directions to a working genie"

"You want to know where you can find a genie that can grant you three wishes, basically?" the genie asked.

"Yes"  
Without uttering any other word, the genie held up five fingers.

"Five words. First word. One syllable"


	6. Do Not Enter Village

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 6

Vigilant ravens sat on naked branches. The houses were under a constant grey sky in Do Not Enter Village, where it was said the sun never moved. It was a widely known scientific fact that a curse lied upon the place.

Do Not Enter Village could not be reached by public transportation. The closest bus station lied in No Place Special, and the journey from there to the cursed village took 15 minutes by broomstick, 25 minutes by carpet and 2 hours by walking. Many people favoured walking just to admire the sinister environment.

The streets were empty and many windows were barred. Even the leaves on the roads looked scared, as if they weren't used to seeing wizards. And it did seem like nobody lived here, and the only thing that suggested otherwise was the fact that the area surrounding the Chapel of Morgaine looked well kept. Either it was well kept, or grass was afraid to grow.

The letters on the tombstones were so flaky and impossible to interpret that it seemed to the young wizards that they had no choice but to simply dig up every grave until they found the tomb of Grizelda Hobgoblin, where the lamp was said to be according to the holidaying genie.

Sirius was the first to stab a grave with a rusty shovel he had found outside a hardware shop next to the bicycle shop in central Do Not Enter.

"_We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig in our mine the whole day through!" _he sang merrily, shuffling dirt behind him, not noticing there was anybody behind him getting covered with dirt. Peter spat some dirt and moved out of the way.

James preferred to dig up graves with the traditional means of magic and simply cast _Earth Blast _on the grave next to the one Sirius' was in the process of desecrating.

"_It ain't no trick to get rich quick"_

"What's going on here?" came a voice from behind them. The visitors jerked around, surprised at the sign of life.

"Nothing!" they lied.

The stranger neared them and raised his torch to his face.

"Grave robbers, are we?"

"No!" The hideous appearance of the old man made them back away slightly, because one of the first rules they taught in Defence Against the Dark Arts was: be wary of unattractive people, for they are more likely to be evil than attractive people. And the old man was missing an eye, and a missing part from the face was a classic warning sign, and as if a missing eye wasn't enough to make him scary, he also had a hump on his back and a hook for a hand.

"You're not from around here, are you?" he said. "Heed my advice, lads: leave the dead alone if you value your lives, for a curse lies upon these tombs"

"Ok"

The old man stared at them, and they stared back.

"Off you go, then!" the old man urged, pointing at them with his hook. "I will kill you all if that's what I have to do to protect this village!"

"You won't have to tell us thrice, we will go" said Remus.

"Just out of curiosity" said Sirius. "Do you sleep at night, and if so, is it heavy sleep or light sleep?"

"Very heavy, like a baby" the old man replied, and watched them until the gate closed behind them again.

Rain started to fall in small, scattered drops as they aimlessly walked down the road past the grave yard.

"Who else wants to find some nice place indoors and play poker until midnight or something?"

James asked, letting his rain-checking hand fall when it was no longer a question of if it was raining, but rather, why didn't he keep his wand in an umbrella yet? It always seemed like a brilliant idea when it rained, but impractical when it didn't because they did spend most of their time indoors and it was harder to fit umbrellas in your pockets.

"Maybe we could try that large house on that distant hill over there" Sirius suggested, pulling off his coat to hold over his head.

"What large house on what distant hill?" James could barely see where he was stepping, the way the rain splashed against the lenses, making everything in his visual field blurry.

"There" Sirius pointed forwards. "Where the lightning just struck a tower. There, it did it again"

James removed the spectacles, pointlessly attempting to dry them off on a soaking wet jacket sleeve.

"Well it does look big and fancy" he said, his vision still blurry but not as sploshy.

"That's just a shed. I think the old man lives there"  
They took, in spite of the rain, their time to under the protection of their coats walk up the hill that lead to the solitary mansion where lightning struck the highest tower repeatedly. Although in good condition overall, the mansion had, like everything else in Do Not Enter, a quality of looking abandoned to it. The wind blew the main gates off their hinges and sent them flying into tree tops. The door to the house was unlocked, and the hall was dark and quiet, and the same could be said about the rooms into which they stuck their heads. When they were done with their very quick inspection of the ground floor, they continued up the stairs to the second. They weren't at this point trying to find out who lived here yet, they just wanted to make sure nobody was home.

In the first room they looked inside on the second floor, they saw very clearly in the light of the torches on the walls a massive coffin glistening in the middle of the floor. They didn't quite know how to react. They had read about vampires in school and done recognizing-exercises, but had so far failed to out anybody (but the exercise had been to ask their classmates a series of questions, and no garlic tests had been allowed because, according to Professor McGonagall, throwing garlic at people was harassment). So as far as they knew, they had never seen anyone in real life. Still, this seemed too good to be true.

"My stake" James ran his hands over the coffin. "The one time I _don't _pack it.

Sirius opened the lid like a child opens a Christmas present. "Maybe it's safely drugged out of its' mind"

A body covered in ribbons of linen bolted upwards, moaning eerily and, quite frankly, freaking the boys out so much they would have run out of the chamber, had the door not slammed shut right before their pretty noses and locked itself. The shock slowed them down so much they all got disarmed before they got a chance to cast _Fire blast _at the mummy. After that, their minds were simply blank as they stood with their backs pressed against the wall as if a wind had pinned them there, watching the mummy discovering its' ribbons.

"Since when do mummys have wands?" James asked. "And I dare you to _not _make a crack at your mother, Padfoot"

"She sleeps in a coffin, you know" said Sirius matter-of-factly, and the things he said matter-of-factly tended to turn out to be blatant, if not lies, grave exaggerations.

"No she doesn't" James therefore said matter-of-factly.

"Yes she does"

"Ok why?"

"Because she is a blood sucking drama queen"

"Right"

"It's true. Unicorn blood is very youth preserving"

Suddenly, after having tried to unwrap itself, the mummy started moaning again as if it found being wrapped in ribbons a frustrating experience, or perhaps just an itchy one. And being itchy was a frustrating experience.

"Who dares enter my mansion?" it growled in its' discomfort, and with a flick of its' wand, all the ribbons shed like skin shed from a serpent.

"Oh it's you!" The very blonde boy with the very sparkly teeth that everybody called Blondie beamed as he kicked the ribbons off his feet. "Fancy seeing you here!" 


	7. A very sneaky attempt

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 7

The rain hit the window like several butterflies trying to get in instead of out. The flames in the fireplace crackled.

"Oh yes!" Blondie swung one leg over the other in the maroon armchair and swirled a glass of wine. "A distant relative of mine died and left me all of this, on the standard condition of course. So I thought, since I want to be a writer, spending a weekend in a cursed town could be a good way to catch two flies with one stone. There are rumours of vampires, and I'd really like to see one" He took a sip, grimacing at the dryness.

"You're writing a book?" James asked surprised, because he thought only smart people could write well. He and Sirius were sharing the sofa in the thriftily furnished drawing room. Peter had pulled up a chair and Remus was looking through a bookshelf by the window.

"I'm planning a factual trilogy with some romance" Blondie replied. "And I don't want it to be just an ordinary book; I want to _really _get to know one, you know? So I thought I'd sleep in a coffin just to see what it feels like. I didn't mean to scare you"  
Since the mansion had a very impressive wine cellar, they let that one slide. For now.

"Are you from here?" Sirius asked, uncorking a Moet Et Chandon he had found in a pretty cabinet.

"No, I'm from No Place Special"

"Do you know Grizelda Hobgoblin?"

Blondie looked hesitant. "That's my distant relative, who died and left me all this"

"Then you must know where her grave is?" said James, sipping from the bottle Sirius had just passed him.

"You'd think so, but…" Blondie gave an apologetic shrug. "I wasn't at the funeral"

"She must have died recently then" said Remus, putting a book back and taking out another. Blondie strummed his glass with his pink finger nails. "Yes, well, maybe. But I still can't tell where her grave is. Because of the hard weather, it really wears out the engravings or something. So that's why I can't tell either. Nobody can. Why this interest in my dead relative, by the way?"

They couldn't very well tell him they wanted to rob her grave. Picking out a new book to look through, a key nearly fell out of it.

"Is that… So _that's _where I put my key!" Blondie practically flew out of the arm chair and took the key from Remus. "Upstairs is a room full of books, I can show you to it"

And that's what Blondie did without awaiting a reply, and as they crossed the room he chatted happily about vampire dentistry, wondering if they developed plaque from all the blood and asking if the world wouldn't be a safer place if they all had their fangs removed until the door closed behind them both and the three remaining in the drawing room could hear no more of the, in all honesty, kind of interesting discussion.

Sirius, who had been sitting in the sofa upside down, shifted into the standard sitting position.

"Grizelda Hobgoblin is not his distant relative" he said, digging in his pockets from the will he had pick-pocketed from Blondie earlier and glanced over it. "Geoff Stevens is his distant relative. Why the lying?"

"Why do you think, Sherlock? He wants the lamp too, obviously" James put the bottle on the coffee table.

"How could he know of the lamp? How many genies are there around?"

"What does it matter how he knows? Try to focus on the main problem"

"What's that?"

"He's trying to bribe our designated finder with books"

When James left the sofa for some restless pacing, Sirius was finally allowed to stretch himself over it.

"I don't see the problem" he said, reaching for the wine. "It's why I can sit here and enjoy this Moet and wait for the exposition"  
"My mum always says to not take things for granted"  
"My mum always says: I wish I had never had you" Buuurrrpp.

You could tell Sirius' had had too much to drink when he started treading on sharing-territory.

"You want to… talk about it?" James asked.

"No" Hiccup. "That's not what I meant to say. What's the other thing she says a lot? 'People don't change'"

James picked up the cards from the table and started shuffling them. "You called her a blood sucking drama queen earlier, is this really a person whose morals you value?"

"Don't accuse me of taking things for granted" Sirius pointed reprimanding. "Maybe you're the one that should give people more credit"  
"That may be, but _still_. _Books"  
_"Blondie is a dim witted poof. I wouldn't worry about anything he might attempt"

Then they started a new round of poker.

You could see through the key hole already how shelves lined the walls. Blondie stuck the key in the lock and it clicked opened. He mentioned that no variation of _Alohomora _had worked as he pressed down the handle to open the door.

It was a small room but the books were tightly backed in the shelves; there was no area of air between any of them. A writing desk stood in the center, and a chair neatly tucked in.

"Well, here it is" said Blondie, reaching out with his arms. "Every book Grizelda Hobgoblin left behind is here. You may look without supervision"

"Thank you" said Remus bitterly, starting with the shelf to the right of the door.

"Can I ask" Blondie neared him in a gossipy fashion. "Why Madam Pince circles you like a hawk nowadays?"

Professor McGonagall had really found the perfect punishment. The unwanted attention that being circled by Pince had brought him had been more than grating on that pesky shame.

"I did something stupid and now I'm punished, that's all" Remus replied shortly.

"_You_ did something stupid?" Blondie tossed his head back, laughing. "Pull the other one!"

Since this really wasn't the first time he had done something moderately thoughtless, Remus couldn't understand why people still found it so hard to believe. But being circled by Pince in the library did draw more attention to his fallibility than previous punishments had.

"I'm capable of doing stupid things, as it happens"

Blondie supported himself against the shelf. "Who isn't, 'though? But be honest" Blondie lowered his voice to a whisper. "It was _really _Sirius' fault, wasn't it?"

Eye roll. "No it wasn't"

"Oh" Blondie eyed him sympathetically. "You really are loyal to a fault. Oh, _don't _look so offended, nobody's perfect"

"You don't even know what happened"  
"If you say so" Blondie strummed the side of the shelf restlessly. Remus had barely looked through one book before the sudden cross-examination had made him lost all interest and put _Controlling bio-dark arts _back where Grizelda Hobgoblin seemed to think it belonged, although he couldn't understand why she had placed it among her Harlequin novels. It seemed to have stopped raining at last, by the lack of sound of it.

"I think I will take a walk or something" he said, still maintaining that polite façade in spite of the offense he had taken, whether or not Blondie had intended it. But Blondie seemed to be genuinely unaware of it.

"Oh, I could use a walk too!" he said eagerly.

The problem with faking politeness was that people couldn't tell when you wanted to get away from them. Remus cleared his throat.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I prefer to take walks by myself"

"Oh" Blondie looked a little hurt. "I've offended you"

"_No-"_

"I didn't mean to back talk anybody"

Now Remus just felt bad for having taken offense in the first place.

"This looks really interesting. I could just really use some air, that's all"

But when he tried to leave, Blondie blocked the door.

"You want to find the grave. I want to find the grave. Let's help each other out"

People blocking door was always a cause for paranoia.

"Pass"

"I can show you another room that is a lot more interesting than this one"

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Why?" Blondie twirled the key around his finger. "Because I looked all the bloody day for this! And how in the world did you find Leprechaun gold?"

It was uncanny how fast rumours travelled at Hogwarts. Not strange, but uncanny.

"I didn't" Remus confessed. "It's not supposed to be found, so I just… You just have to know how to solidify a mirage, and then swap it with the original"

Blondie pocketed the key again. "See, you don't just coincidentally stumble upon things, you're clever too!"

The relentless flattery was just too much, and it felt so awkward. "It's not clever, it's just nerdy"

"Is that what they call you? People who are insecure will put others down"

It was clear that Blondie had some hidden agenda, Remus just wish he'd spit it out already. Blondie continued:

"Look" he said, suggesting he was close to spitting it out at last. "Has it ever occurred to you that you don't have to be, to be quite blunt, their pushover?"

Remus had to agree that Blondie was indeed a dim witted poof, and without dignifying that with a response he waited for Blondie to go on.

"I mean" he went on "library supervision and banned from the book club and I'm supposed to believe that quiet teachers' pet you were in a disruptive mood?"

"No"

"Why would you risk getting expelled when all you do is study like there is no tomorrow as if you're afraid of getting expelled any moment?"

"That's really none of your business" _And also_, he felt like adding but didn't, _get a life!_ So what if he was a pushover? Why was that a reason to block the door? Perhaps if he wasn't a pushover, he would have kicked his head in by now.

"Look, I know you're cursed" said Blondie at last.

Hearing that always felt like being washed over with led in a shrinking, darkening room without air. Remus searched his bag calmly for his inhaler.

"Could you move out of the way, please?"

Blondie didn't just move out of the way, he opened the door for him too.

"So you see? You don't have to be their pushover"

"So I'm supposed to be _your _pushover?"

"If you have to be someone's pushover, you might as well be the pushover of someone that doesn't make you risk your reputation on a regular basis"

Remus would have liked to give him a piece of his mind, if it hadn't been for that pesky anxiety. It was difficult to talk when you couldn't breathe and that walk outside wasn't just a convenient excuse to leave now, it was necessity.


	8. Upstairs Downstairs

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 8

The pile of jewelry glistened in the dim light from the decorative torches. James put his arms around them and scooped it onto his lap while Sirius shuffled the cards with a somewhat contained grumpiness, checking every other card for signs of cheating.

"How dumb do you think I am?" James asked, trying to fit as many rings as possible onto his fingers.

"Let's not spoil the mood" When the naked eye found no signs for cheating, the wand got to take over.

"You've lost three times in a row" said James. "I know the mood has been spoiled long ago where you're concerned"  
"Why am I shuffling? It's your turn to deal" Sirius sent the deck of cards diagonally across the table. He was still lying stretched out on the sofa while James had occupied the armchair.

"You have nothing to bet with anymore" James picked up the deck to shuffle them some more.

"I'm not ever taking IOU's from you again"

Sirius scanned the room for valuables but found nothing. One snap with his fingers, and Peter appeared obediently by his head like he had been taught.

"Find valuables and bring them to me"

"Yes master" Peter bowed his head and scurried out of the room. James dealt.

"Last game. Then I want to look for that lamp"

They looked at their cards. Sirius pulled his ouroboros-skin boots off of his feet and put them on the table.

"Shoes…" James didn't sound impressed, but secretly he found those bright mother-of-pearl buckles too fabulous for words.

"Cost me my grans' ring and loads of silver bullets"

"If you say so…" Before tossing a tacky crown in the pot, James wanted to check the fabulous shoes for curses. He started by sticking his wand into one of the boots carefully.

"How dumb do you think I am?" Sirius yawned.

The boot bit off the tip of the wand.

"Moony gets the weirdest cravings around that time, doesn't he?"

"You owe me a new wand"

The tip would not fall out of the boot even when held upside down, as if it had actually swallowed it.

The door to the manor slammed shut so loudly it startled Peter. But nobody had come in so he went to look through the window to see who had left. When he saw Remus walking briskly down the steep path, indecision struck him. He could stay and look for jewelry like a good servant and hopefully get some approval and respect that way, and eventually qualify as a cool person himself since apparently if you slaved for cool people you could too one day be cool. That's what he had been told anyway. Or he could go along with Remus who was perhaps not cool, but nicer and less scary and not as bossy. Eventually he boldly decided to grab his jacket and run out into the rain. It didn't rain as heavy now as it had earlier.

"Where are you going?" he panted when he had caught up.

Remus halted with a slight flinch, as if he hadn't heard any footsteps.

"Just getting some air. Bored with poker so soon?"

"They need more jewelry so I have to get more jewelry"

"Does it have to be jewelry? There's a safe behind the tapestry, try there"

"Ok-"  
"Or, you can tell them to get their own damn jewelry"

Peter blushed at the thought. "It's fine, I don't mind"

"Ok. Good luck" Remus continued the brisk walk, and Peter the brisk jog.

"I just hope nothing bad will happen because I didn't hide my great aunts' genie lamp"

Remus halted again. "I completely forgot it was your lamp. I'm sorry we used it without even asking"

"But it was to get a better lamp"

They arrived at the gate of the Chapel of Morgaine.

"Well, might as well get it over with, so I can get back to my spriggans" said Remus opening it.

The once flaky letters on the tombstones had changed. They were not only glowing now, but changing so fast you couldn't make out any of the inscriptions. The yard was empty and there was nothing in the night sky that could give any clue of what had caused this change. The only proof that somebody had been here not too long ago was that somebody had finished digging where James and Sirius had started digging earlier and now you could see the coffins. Casting _Open Sesame _on the lids revealed literally nothing. The coffins were completely empty, except for the beds and pillows.

So stunned were they by the surprise that they didn't hear the moaning zombies behind them.

Evidence that Grizelda Hobgoblin had been mad was proved by the fact that she had embroidered her house elves on a tapestry that she kept in the hall. Sirius tore it down and tossed it aside. The door to the unlocked safe swung open slowly on its' squeaky hinges. It contained no jewelry. James turned the knob a couple of times for no particular reason before he got bored with that and locked the safe completely.

"The janitor should be sleeping like a baby right now" said Sirius.

The sound of footsteps ascending the stairs caught their attention.

"Trying to figure out the pass?" Blondie asked, coming towards them.

"Don't seem to have one" Sirius turned the knob to number 5 at random and the safe opened again. "But you probably knew that"

"I didn't even know that was here. I only came here last night" Although Blondie had been lying to them before, he seemed sincere. He was in the drama club so they knew he was a bad actor.

"So you didn't empty it" said James. "It was always empty"  
"Why would Grizelda Hobgoblin, my distant relative, keep her valuables in a safe when it's a widely known fact that you can't break into Gringotts?"

"Breaking into Gringotts is child's play" Sirius snorted, spreading out the torn down tapestry on the stone floor.

"Do you know how she died?" James asked.

"Of course I know how she died!" Blondie snapped, as if he had taken offence to being asked. Then he paused, and glanced down at the tapestry, biting his lip.

"Uh…" he finally replied. "Suicide. Yes. Sad, isn't it? She was lonely"

"Where's the room with the books, this way?" Sirius asked, already halfway up the stairs.

"I can show you!" Blondie ran past him happily.


	9. Team Death Finders

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 9

The white masked youths in their matching green t-shirts with _Team Death Finders _printed on them in silver lied scattered across the chapel floor, stunned. The antagonistic lamp seekers had sought refuge from the zombies in the chapel before Remus and Peter, and when the latter two had done the same they had been met with plenty of sneaky and illegal curses and although they had been perfectly capable to ward off the dark arts with environment friendly light arts, they had still been two against five (although it had seemed like one against five) and had not a particularly disloyal Death Finder intervened and stunned one of his own when the other had been amidst producing an unforgivable, things could have ended very differently.

"The basin" said the masked boy, leading them to the Sacred Vinegar at the altar. "Now it's still, but it was whirling like mad before. I am convinced it is connected to the tombs somehow"

"Why are you telling us this?" Remus asked.

The masked boy shrugged and nodded at his stunned companions on the floor. "I don't think they should possess a magic lamp. Although I do hate mudbloods very, very much. They think we need the lamp to find the treasure, but I think I can find it without help"

"What treasure?"

"You know, the treasure!" He gestured as if it was self-explanatory. "The treasure of Squidbeard the Hardworking. It's the prize of this years' international treasure hunt. You _have _heard of the international treasure hunt, haven't you?"

"No" Remus shook his head.

"Well… Doesn't matter. You Gryffindors couldn't find a grain of sand in a desert. No offence" The masked boy turned away, wrapping his cape around him. "But now I must go. I was never here"

The cape rustled as the boy ran out of the chapel.

"That was weird" said Peter. "What now?"

"Not much to do if it's not whirling" Remus put the basing through some basic tests, but the results revealed nothing of interest.

Peter neared one of the fallen that lied slouched under a small organ. "I want to look under their masks" he said excitedly. "I'm going to do it! I will do it!"

Then he pulled off the mask with the same speed and jerky movements commonly used when trying to swat a fly. Then he screamed and put it back on and backed away.

The hard wind barely drowned out the moaning sounds from outside that had started again and increased in volume and numbers by the second. The zombies that had been at a temporary rest were up and about and hungry for brains again. And now the liquid in the basin that wasn't vinegar at all was indeed whirling and the letters on the tomb stones could be seen shimmering again from the window.

"It's the same colour…" said Remus, looking from the basin to the tombstones outside, feeling this observation didn't make him that much wiser. Then he glanced towards the masked boy that had scared Peter so much partly because of his hideous appearance but also because he had learned to associate him with horrible things, and left to go through his robes for notebooks, lose papers and any piece of writing. Some lose change fell out during the search but he put it back.

"Love potion number 7, love potion number 8, love potion number 9" he mumbled under his breath as he looked through a note book on his way back to the basin. "Here's something: _Sorcerer Ink , _maybe that could be it" He was browsing frenetically now. "_'Controls magic writing, can be given various properties, commonly used to create delusion"_ He browsed impatiently for more information but found none. "But how do you stop or undo the bloody thing?" He could hear Snapes' voice inside his head, taunting him for not paying attention in potions' class. "I do _too _pay attention in potions' class!"

"Who are you talking to?" Peter asked, a little scared.

"_You're _stupid!"

"What?"

"Not you" Remus switched to another notebook. "If it's not in here, maybe there's some basic universal trick…" Halfway through the tattered moleskin, a lose page nearly fell to the floor. Remus turned it over and found that on the other side of the blank page was a very handy list of quick-fixes for all kinds of scenarios, such as just undoing one step, un-contamination and checking for flaws and mistakes and the like. He searched for a trick that could deactivate a potion.

""_Deactivation: just add one drop of the ordinary human blood of an ordinary human yes I'm looking at you yes you'" _

"Who, me?" Peter asked.

Remus glanced skeptically at Snape who was still lying under the organ, limper than a dummy, and then back at the notes. _Yes, thickhead, you!_

Startled, Remus put down the notes quickly on the altar and cast a couple of knock-out charms of various kinds on Snape just to make sure he really was unconscious and not just pretending.

"It's so sad that some people are so insecure they have to put others down" said Remus bitterly.

"I've never understood that" said Peter. "I feel pretty insecure but I don't think I've ever put anybody down because of it"

"It's put down or be put down. That's why real courage isn't about hunting zombies, it's about not being a pushover… like me…" Remus dug his bag for a dagger, and found it quickly.

"You're not a pushover" said Peter sadly. "_I'm _the pushover. I never argue with anybody"

"Being a nagging pushover is not a whole lot better" Remus tested the sharpness of the blade on his own finger first. "You know, you don't have to be a pushover if you don't want, if you really think you're a pushover. You just have to stop letting people push you around" He grabbed Peter by the wrist and held it over the basin. "Don't let people take advantage of you all the time" Peter winced when his finger was cut in. "Just say _no!" _Remus had to squeeze the finger pretty hard for a drop into the basin because he hadn't cut deep enough.

"N-n-" Thud. Peter simply couldn't be in the presence of blood without passing out completely.

The Chapel of Morgaine, wrapped in a blanket of shadowing clouds, could be seen from the window in the small library that faced the steep path that lead to central Do Not Enter. The clouds had begun to thin out a little, and the very first stars had started to reveal themselves on the cloud-free blotches of the night sky.

"Whatever that was, it's gone now" Sirius flicked a page in a short novel entitled _Strange Recompense, _which he had just picked out at random just because of the tacky 50's drawing of a longing couple on the cover and was now unable to put away.

"I'm looking through the same window, by the way. Hello" When done looking at everything through a small pair of binoculars, James put them down to inspect the door some. Sirius hung the abandoned device around his neck.

"Grizelda must have been one tiny lady" he said, gazing through them upon the distant chapel. "Now it's started again. Those things are either zombies, or my family at Christmas. Can I get a badum-tish?"

"Absolutely not" James tugged at the door knob, but it was locked.

"So Miss Hobgoblin liked to pry, did she?" Sirius looked down at the roof outside, and then at a tower to the right that pillared over the entire house.

Looking through the shelves, it was clear that this was where Miss Hobgoblin had kept her collection of romance novels and if she owned any factual books at all, this was not where she had kept them. James would have paid no more attention to them, had not one book caught his eye just because it had been put there spine first.

"_Contolling Bio-Dark Arts" _ he read from the title, and flicked through the book a bit.

"Is that different from organic dark arts?" Sirius asked.

"I have no idea, but it sounds bio-degradable"

"Zombies aren't bio-degradable"  
"That's true. Maybe they're not bio-arts, then, but they are in here. Maybe they're not even that dark. Like Professor Mill always says in magic and morals class, some things are just dark when you use them for devious purposes. So think of a way to use zombies for good, if you can"  
"Maybe if they got a proper meal of brains they wouldn't be so cranky" Sirius turned back to the drama on the chapel yard. "Controlling, you say… Is that why they seem to be completely immune to _Scorchus_, although that's supposed to work on everything?"

"My favourite lunatics are the ones that scribble in the margins" said James. "Cuts down on reading time, makes it all so much easier. Obviously to destroy the zombies, the _mother zombie _has to be destroyed first"

"The margin scribbles told you that?"

"End quote"

"Does it say where the mother zombie is by any chance?"

"No"  
There was nothing else to do but simply look for it, and because the door was locked they had to get out through the window.

The knob to the safe was numbered 1 – 1000. Blondie thought: what the heck, let's wake them all up and turned it to the highest number. Then he put on his helmet and holding the stake high, he ran out of the mansion.

When a thousand zombies closed in on you in a tight wall of reeking undead, making it impossible to simply run away, the safest course of action was to take shelter in a coffin because zombies were simply so stupid that if they couldn't see you, they forgot all about you.


	10. The secret laboratory

Teapot of the Orient

Part 10

Getting a feel for the vampire lifestyle was not the only thing Blondie had used the coffin for. It had also had the bottom cut out before being placed over a door on the floor. As for the ribbons, it became evident that Blondie had used them to find his way back when he had gone exploring the many hidden passageways with its many crossroads, and he had left the other end in a room that resembled a laboratory, because it was a laboratory. A neat row of pickled, green brains captured Sirius' interest.

"I was just wondering where to get brains to test my hypothesis with" he said, unscrewing one jar and sniffing, thinking that if he'd ever need a perfume to complement a Halloween costume, he knew where to find it. "Eau the Lobe"

Meanwhile, James was opening drawers at random.

"Here are some bags if you need something to carry your Eau the Le Cerebreux with" he said. "Le paper or le plastic?"

"_Paper! _Think of the ozone layer!"

James tossed him a folded paper bag and closed the drawer. "Speaking of things that are bad for le ozone layer" he said as he went to inspect the large corpse in the middle of the laboratory. It was dark and shriveled like the mummies you saw in muggle history museums and it was kept upright in a large glass cage. A large cross hovered above it that was attached to the arms and legs of the undead with ribbons, literally making it a very dark marionette although its movement resembled that of a drowned victim slowly sinking to the bottom of an ocean. The arrangement was so drenched in dark arts it emitted green light, enough to make the skin burn if you stood too close. James backed away some. Sirius still seemed to find the brains the most interesting thing in the entire laboratory.

"_III ain't got nobo-ody, and nobody cares a-for- a-me" _

He scatted merrily as he packed the brains and some skulls along with them in the environmental friendly paper bag from Wizards' Waitrose.

"Igor!" James shouted.

"Froderick!" Sirius shouted back and then the obligatory pop-culture reference was out of the way.

"Large stiff in the middle of the room. Care to take a look?"

"Is this some sort of a pick-up?" Sirius put the bag on the counter next to a small radio before inspecting the zombie puppet.

"And also a dead body"

They scanned all surfaces for off-switches and anything that could serve as an off-switch. Sirius found next to a microscope a small notebook with fuchsia spirals and picked it up, hoping there was something helpful in the margins. But he had been mistaken in thinking the notebook had belonged to Grizelda Hobgoblin. The draft for _Roadtripping with Revenants 1: Urges _was written in various colours of ink and every 'i' was dotted with a crescent and this triggered a memory of Blondies' presentation notes he had seen when they had done a presentation together back when the professors still chose the pairs. Hopping up on the counter with the intention of reading the first couple of pages "ironically", Sirius quickly found himself absorbed in the weak plot and compelled by the flat romantic lead.

"Just _what _does she see in Victor?" Flick. "This story is _so _stupid-" Gasp. "_No!"_

When he didn't gasp at the dramatic turns he chortled at the more intimate scenes. Finding this distracting and unhelpful, James snatched the notebook from him and nobly cast _Avada Kedavra _on the entire draft, making it an ex-draft.

"Could you focus please?"

Sirius hopped down from the table. "Oh _I _see. You need my detectivy expertise, do you?"

"No, I need you to remember the time your mum attached dark ribbons to you to make you clean your room or something, and how she did it"  
"I never had to clean my room. We had house elves. Although one time when I tried to do a Frankensteins' house elf I had to have blancmange for a week" Sirius shivered at the memory, staring emptily before him. "And wash my hair with _soap"_

"Wow le evilness" said James. Sirius glared at him.

"I lost my hmmm" He took a deep breath. "Can't even say it"

"Right, well, did you use ribbons?"

"No but you saw the brains didn't you?" Sirius went to fetch the bag. He picked up one of the jars. "They're green and tiny"

"Yes. Yes they are"

"And maybe your brain is green and tiny too, but most wizards don't have green and tiny brains"

"I assume it's _not _because some… chemical reaction"

"House elf brains. Miss Hobgoblin liked to collect them. But one jar was empty" Sirius put the jar back in the bag and fetched the empty jar that be had been left behind.

"Maybe someone took it" said James.

"Why would someone take only the brain and leave the jar?"

"To make it seem like there's a house elf somewhere"

"Exactly"

"Maybe somebody used the brain for something here and didn't need to bring the jar somewhere"

"Let's assume for arguments' sake that you're wrong"

"You want to look for house elves, but if Miss Hobgoblin died, why would a house elf hang around?"

"Because they're crazy, and maybe it was told to. They will do anything. I once told one to go jump off a bridge"

"Well, since you're such an expert, where do they hang out?"

"In convenient eaves dropping locations"

Sirius threw the empty jar on the floor. Shards of glass and drops of brain juice bounced like a firework, rapidly turning the laboratory into a place where it was not suitable to be barefoot.

Then they left the lab, Sirius taking the paper bag with him. But they didn't go far. Out in the dark corridor, they stuck their see-ears, which looked like rubber ears, onto the iron door so they could see into the lab. Then they waited. Nearly a minute passed. Then the zombie stopped moving before at last the cupboard doors beneath the radio opened and a house elf tiptoed quietly out of there, constantly looking around herself to make sure she was alone- they assumed it was a 'she' because she had a bow on her head, but it was a blue bow so they couldn't be entirely sure. The pillowcase she wore had a flowery pattern, but like most ladies, Miss Hobgoblins had probably just liked flowery patterns. When the house elf was convinced nobody was hiding inside the lab, she fetched from the cupboard beneath the sink a bucket and a rag to swab the mess with, resembling a Cinderella of the elf world. Watching her clean wasn't particularly interesting. The small barrel organ inside the cupboard in which she had been hiding, however, was interesting. Occupied with the swabbing as the elf was, she had no chance to defend herself against the stunning ray that seemingly out of nowhere hit her right in the chest and sent her falling flat on her back like a timber faster than you could say mop.

"I thought that was the radio" said James, taking the barrel organ from the cupboard and giving it some test turns with the roller, to make sure it really was connected to the zombie.

"I _knew _radio 2 wouldn't have a 'barrel organ special'" said Sirius.

Because they couldn't see if anything they had done down here had affected the situation on the graveyard, they exited the lab yet again and ventured into the cold and dark corridors, taking the barrel organ, the brains and the guiding ribbon with them.


	11. Who fights zombies in helmets anyway?

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 11

Blondie had so looked forward to play the hero for once. He had planned his lines and everything: _Hand over the lamp or the zombies will get you! _Ok, the villain but that simplified his role too much in his opinion. But the zombies vanished the moment he arrived, and he looked about himself, uncertain of how to proceed. He lowered his stake and checked his breath.

"Oh well" he shrugged it off and went to the tomb of Grizelda Hogoblin, which was easy to find now that the inscriptions on the stones were still and luminous. "At last the lamp shall be mine, and I will win the treasure and then I can afford to leave Hogwarts and pursue my dream of becoming a famous author of young adult vampire fiction"

He gave his surroundings another quick look, making sure he really was alone. He looked down at the coffin in the tomb that was stripped from soil and highlighted in the night by the emerging quarter moon above. Then, as he pointed his wand at the casket lid, something knocked him over from behind and he fell, hitting his head on another tombstone and lost his consciousness.

"Well here it is" said Sirius, hopping off the flying carpet first.

They looked down the two open tombs, listening to the moaning sounds that emerged from one of them, wondering if there was a zombie in there.

Sirius raised his wand. "_Avada keda-"_

But alas, James hindered him. "We've talked about this"

"You used it on the notes earlier"

"Crap notes!"  
"You're _such _a hypocrite…" He turned his attention to the quiet tomb of Grizelda and simply blast of the lid without further ado. Bits of shredded casket lid shot in the air like confetti and Remus shut his eyes tightly to not get splinters in his eyes. Sirius bowed his head and spoke ceremoniously.

"This nerd is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late nerd"  
"_You're _Grizelda Hobgoblin? You think you know someone" said James and blast off the lid to the casket of Jemima Hobgoblin.

"It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible" Sirius dug up some soil from the ground to sprinkle Remus with. "This is a ex-nerd"  
Remus sat up, spitting dirt.

"Where are the zombies?" he asked.

"Gone. You're not the only master finder around here"

They almost had to shout because the grave was so deep. It was fortunate the bed had been soft enough to prevent fractures.

"Is this Grizeldas' tomb?"

"It's what the stone says"

Remus searched everywhere; beneath the satin mattress, inside of it, inside the cushion and the walls but found absolutely nothing. He brushed the feathers off of him.

"Are you sure?"

"If I can _read?"_ Sirius tossed some more soil at Remus.

"That's not her coffin" said James, when he had helped Peter out of the other grave. "Look. This one is a lot closer to the ground that that one. That is the coffin of whoever was buried at that spot before Grizelda"

"Should it not have been biodegraded?"

"A wizard did it"

"So… Where are the zombies, then? That were actually buried here, I mean. Where do they go when their coffins are occupied?"

The question hung in the air, remaining untouched by qualified theories.

"The pub?" James suggested. Sirius lit himself a floo-roll.

"If the lamp isn't here, it means the genie was lying"

"Maybe it was true at the time" Remus tried to climb out of the grave using imprints in the soil. "Odd" he said, studying them so closely his nose nearly touched them.

"Yes you are" Getting down on his knees, Sirius reached down to pull him up when the imprints stopped being useful. "Bored so soon?"

"You wouldn't have lasted two minutes"  
"No, but you love confined spaces"

They got up on their feet and brushed soil from their clothes. Remus especially was giving himself a good slapping.

"Bloody… nargles!"

"Are they invisible?" James asked.

"You can only see them in total darkness" Slap, slap.

"What's this I see? You killing? Tsk tsk" Sirius took the bag of brains from the hovering carpet.

"It's not killing. Loud noises scare them off"

"If you can't see them, how do you know?"

"I can still-" Splat. "Ew" He wiped off invisible nargle mush on the hovering rug. "No one saw that"

"No. Anyway, what do you think? Could my latest brand of perfume attract zombies?" Sirius dabbed some of that Eau de Cerebreux on his neck. Fed up with filling in for his bipolar mum, Remus decided to say nothing because once Sirius had made up his mind about something- that he wanted to be food for zombies, for example- the only things that could get him to reconsider were threats to his appearance (mainly weight), and he probably didn't need to be reminded what zombies looked like anyway because everybody had seem horror films.

"Did you do something that made them go away?" he asked.

"We stunned a house elf and hid a barrel organ. The standard procedure" said James, assisting Sirius in becoming desirable to the undead by some additional splashing. Not wanting to be completely showered in brain juice, Sirius retorted by splashing some back and because James found this completely uncalled for since he had never showed any interest in being food for zombies he attacked with larger splashes. Eventually they started pouring the liquid over each others' heads.

Remus looked down Grizeldas' grave.

"There was another coffin there before, I'm sure of it. Somebody must have taken it while we were in the chapel"

"And you didn't notice any shady people casually sneaking about with a coffin?" Sirius asked, shaking the glass jar with the brain and observing how it wobbled like a blancmange with mild interest.

"I was kind of distracted, ok? And how could I have, when none of the windows face this way, so _there!"_

Whipping out their magnifying glasses they all decided to look for extra flattened grass and different types of ash.

"How could they take the coffin if there were a bunch of zombies?" James asked.

They all glanced at Blondie lying on the wet grass with his head against a tombstone, his long, blonde hair falling out of the helmet in a fashion that resembled a waterfall, his perfectly even teeth sparkling in his half-open mouth, looking like a gender-bent Sleeping Beauty. He looked so peaceful.

"So, so beautiful…" Sirius stared as if under a hypnosis."So, so blonde"

"Why is he unconscious when he was wearing a helmet?" Peter asked at last, after having pondered the mystery the past ten minutes. Nobody had anything more to offer for an answer than a shrug of no-idea.

"Maybe we should look for a bicycle shop or something" said James. "People don't just show up at cemeteries in helmets"

"They do if they know what's best for them" said Remus.

"You didn't"  
"I didn't know there would be zombies"  
"Well, normal people don't fight zombies in helmets. Blondie did, because he knew he wouldn't be able to defend himself properly. Whoever took the coffin knew that too. So… Maybe a bicycle shop can give some looks"  
And since the others were unable to come up with a better place to clue for looks, they all went along with it.


	12. An interrupted experiment

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 12

The bicycle shop had been short on yellow helmets. From that they had deduced that since very few actually had yellow as their favourite colour and because it was the colour of cowardice, Hufflepuffs had the missing coffin.

But it was well after midnight and the lads wanted to boost their energy with some large mugs of espresso before carrying on. After a quick visit to the kitchen where they got their coffees and their chamomile and their milk (which had still been fresh, oddly enough), they took their beverages to the drawing room.

Sirius yawned as he sunk down on the sofa and threw his feet over the pile of books on Remus' lap.

"The zombies can't just have vanished" Remus pulled the book on the top of the pile from beneath Sirius' feet and placed it over the feet.

"The pub is probably closed but why would that stop them" said Sirius. "Although if they want a drink they could just come here"  
He and James were after a quick shower no longer wet and reeking from that Halloween special scent. Remus only wished Sirius had showered his boots too.

"Your shoes are covered in mud. I want to take them off but I also don't want to"

"That can happen when you live on the edge"

"You usually clean them for less. Are those _really _your shoes?"

Ahem. "No"

The shoes were eye-catchingly ordinary. The shoes James were wearing, however, where uncharacteristically fashionable for him. He sat slouched across the armchair and bent forward to remove a piece of grass from a shoelace. Then he continued playing the barrel organ, which he had played uninterruptedly since they had returned from the cemetery, only taking a break to sip espresso and brush off a leaf from the heel.

"You can have them I needed new ones anyway" he said.

"I thought you thought my shoes were 'swishy'" said Sirius, pulling the table closer to him. Then he placed on the table not only a brain jar but also what seemed to be an electrode cord with clamps at the ends and an on switch on one end. He unscrewed the jar and attached one end to the brain.

"Come over here, Wormtail" he then said in a suspiciously un-commanding way.

"W-why?" Peter stuttered boldly.

"Because I need your help"

Peter abided gullibly and let Sirius attach the other clamp to his ear. Reaching past him, Remus freed the ear from the clamp and moved it to Sirius' ear, to which Sirius retorted with moving the clamp from his ear to Remus' ear. It was all done fairly non-violently and ended quickly with Remus tossing the cord into the fire place and then returning to the books.

"It's for my independent studies. I thought you found that important" said Sirius.

"Next time ask first" Page flick.

"Fine" Sirius dug after another cord and repeated the procedure. "Wormtail can I pretty please switch your brain for that of a house elf?"

"I don't know…" Peter hooked his fingers nervously. He was truly at his boldest tonight.

"Thank you" Like before, Sirius attached one clamp to Peters' ear but the cord got tossed away, along with all the other cords that were still in the bag, into the fire.

"I just wanted to see if you'd notice any difference…" Sirius muttered, now bored.

"So those are house elf brains?" Remus asked.

"Couldn't you tell from how green and tiny they were?"

"Could have been… goblin brains"

"Did that make more sense to you?"

"Whatever. Do people bury their house elves and have funerals for them and that sort of thing?"

Snort. "If they're sentimental"

"You snort, but you have funerals for your cats" James pointed out.

"That's _entirely _different. Cats are smart and pretty"

A calico matagot that had been left behind in the mansion by Grizelda chose this moment to hop up on Sirius' chest and roll itself into a bun.

"And squishy and moody killing machines _yes they are!" _ He scratched the spotty feline under it's' chin. "They are kind of like tiny werewolves, when you think about it"

"Are werewolves that smart, 'though? Don't look at me like that, Moony, you know what I mean"

"That's because you measure intelligence by how smart you can teach something to sit" said Sirius. "Rather than whom it will kill first if given a choice. My bet is on you right now"  
"I couldn't do that with my Bichon Frisés. They're not moody killing machines, they're just squishy"

"Anyway" said Sirius, scratching the cat behind the ears. "It's a real shame you keep opposing my experiments. The things we could learn, and what a great book it could become. And then a musical"

He felt his legs being gently pushed away, and shortly after the door opened and closed.

"Well" said Sirius. "I hope you're proud of yourself"

"You started it, with the cats"

"Maybe we should get off our arses too and get on with the lamp thing"

"Good luck" said James, getting up from the armchair. But Sirius remained pinned down to the sofa by the cat, and to make matters adorably worse, it was purring. Looking around for a better offer for it, Sirius cleverly solved the conundrum by casting the _Flock of herrings _charm at Peter. The cat jumped him faster than flies jumped piles of seductive manure.

Because the guiding ribbon had been removed, and secret pathways tended to be designed to disorient you, James and Sirius spent what felt like forever passing through several narrow corridors that just came to dead ends before they finally reached a staircase they both recognized.

"We went down these stairs, I am sure of it" said James.

"Now, we took the stairs that were further down that way" Sirius insisted.

And so they agreed that last person to the lab was a sissy before they parted, Peter along with James and the cat along with Sirius.


	13. The Tomb of Grizelda Hobgoblin

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 13

Grizelda Hobgoblin, the witch and not her latest house elf that went by the same name, seemed to have been a most creepy specimen of witch. She kept her deceased house elves in glass coffins in a catacomb she had built for them, a catacomb entitled The Tomb of Grizelda Hobgoblin. A little sign on the wall above the entrance explained it all; that it was named after her 13th and still living house elf, the brain of which she had intended to use to complete her great creation: a multiple headed giant house elf. But then she had unexpectedly died. Clearly a loony. Remus stepped into the catacomb.

Dead house elves in glass coffins were a disturbing sight indeed, and this was a strange place to hide a magic lamp. Creative, but strange. The genie could have referred to the entire catacomb, but it became clear that he had referred to the empty glass cage of the still living Grizelda-elf.

The small, glass cage sat on a podium and inside was a satin bed and a velvet cushion with golden tassels, on which the lamp sat like a crown, glistening in the dim lumos.

Then, as he started thinking about brains, he felt a cat brush by him, and the unexpectedness of it had him so shocked he nearly stepped on its tail and bumped the class cage behind him out of place.

Footsteps echoed and Sirius emerged from the dark and stopped by the lamp, carrying in one hand an ax he had found on an emergency box to the right of the exit, his other hand strumming long, black nails against the glass cage.

"Would it be completely wrong if I took just one dead house elf? Or all of them, it's not like she needs them" he asked.

Remus put the other glass cage back in its place.

"What do you need a Frankensteins' house elf for?"

"It's about starting _small. _Anyway, will you smash it or what?"

Putting his hands on the corners of the podium, Remus looked down at the lamp pensively.

"You packed 10 brains" he said. "Did you leave two?"

"No but so what?"

"Two missing zombies, two missing brains…"

"_Elf _brains"

"I know, but _still…"_

"You sound very disappointed at the prospect of having a pint with a zombie"  
"Nothing makes sense and it is annoying"

"You stopped using contractions, you really _are _annoyed. Here" Sirius placed the ax on the glass cage. "You do the honours"  
"You do it. I know you like smashing things"

Then they just shoved the ax back and forth between themselves, insisting the other fussed less and smashed more.

"Stop this compulsive politeness" said Sirius impatiently. "I know you want to pretend the glass cage is my face"  
"I do _not. Yet"_

"Prongs' face, then. He is the one who called you stupid. I would never call you stupid! A lot of things, but not stupid"

Tired of this, Remus took the ax and it clanged when he dropped it on the stone floor. Then he simply lifted the glass case and placed it upside down on top of another glass case.

"What was the ax for, then?" Sirius picked up the ax, disappointed at the lack of smashing.

"Emergencies" Remus poked the gleaming lamp carefully with his wand, as if expecting something sudden to happen. When nothing did, he stuck the wand through the ear and dropped it in a zip lock bag he had kept in his pocket, afraid to touch it directly lest it had some one-lamp-to-rule-them-all power.

"Yes" Grizelda-elf sat on a barrel and looked up from the cup of Merlot that had out of the blue inspired her to confess everything. "Some people said Mistress was mad for wanting to create a multiple brained house elf. But like she always said, you have to start small. What she really wanted was to have multiple brains herself, for supreme knowledge. She was so frustrated, every time she had to delete a piece of information in favour of adding something new. She thought that multiple brains would solve this. And as the proverb goes, 12 are too few, 14 are too many"

"But how does this connect to the zombies?" James asked.

When looking for the secret lab had simply taken too long, he and Peter had simply gone to the wine cellar and broken a dusty bottle of Shiraz and waited for the elf to show up with a mop and bucket.

Grizelda-elf was swaying slightly, and her speech became increasingly slurred but it was still intelligible enough.

"Well, before she retired she was an archeologist" Grizelda-elf explained. "On one of her trips she found a magic lamp that she didn't want to use but still wanted to keep as a souvenir" Sip. Hiccup. "This was a very strong cup of grape tea"

Truth Serum in tea produced a very distinct smell, in French red wines it didn't.

"People knew that she had it, of course" Grizelda-elf went on. "She was proud of her finding and saw no reason to keep it a secret from people she trusted wouldn't go mad from the information. So when people set up schemes to take it from her, she knew she had to hide it somewhere. Being a romantic as she was, she faked her death and hid the lamp in the Elf Catacombs, which she entitled the Tomb of Grizelda Hobgoblin just so people would confuse it with-"

"Wait, wait, wait" James interrupted her. "She's not actually dead?"

"No, she's on holiday. Anyway, the zombies are really just for making people think they are close to the lamp. She dug up one corpse to used as a mother-zombie, and the coffin along with it because her waterbed had started leaking"

So that explained why one coffin was missing, but not the other one and why there had been more deceased elves on the tapestry than there had been elf brains in the lab.

"Why were two elf brains missing from the lab?"  
Grizelda-Elf stirred in her strong grape tea with her elf-green finger.

"Mistress was very good to me" Her eyes widened and she spoke in that sort of calm tone psychopaths often used when they tried to convince others they were making perfect sense.

"She was going to harvest your brain" said James.

"Yes, and I would have let her but she started to get second thoughts and then she had to leave the country. Her last request before she went on her holiday was for me to protect the lamp. When first the blonde fellow with the bleached teeth showed up and somehow found the secret lab although he doesn't seem all that sharp upstairs, I knew there was a risk the mother zombie would be destroyed. So when he left again, I took two of the brains. Then when Laurel and Hardy jumped inside those coffins and two zombies were wandering about and heading towards the pub, I saw my chance to lure them with the brains. Not playing the barrel organ will only make them unaggressive, so where else are they going to go if their coffins are taken?"

It all made perfect sense, at least for the moment. A combination of being compelled by the exposition and a cramping wrist had made James pause the barrel organ playing, but now he started rolling it again.

"And where did you lure them with the brains?"

"The Elf Catacomb"

"Mhm, mhm…" The music that had been irritating before had now a strangely calming effect. "And the quickest route to the lab is?"

The elf gave the boys very detailed directions and dozed off.


	14. Break glass in case of emergency

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 14

As Sirius and Remus left the catacomb in no particular hurry, they were both given quite a start when suddenly a fist broke through the stone floor with such force that bits of stone and floor gushed like a fountain on high speed. Glass cases shattered as bits of stone hit them. The first fist was soon followed by three other fists and then two zombies arose through the stones effortlessly, as if they were just getting up from water.

Zombies, as everybody knew, were known for not being quick on their feet. But they usually attacked in masses. Here there were only two, which would have been less of a big deal had not a solid stone wall appeared in the place where the exit had been, blocking the only known way out. Sirius swung the ax around as if it was a juggling club.

"It does say: _Break glass in case of emergency" _ he read on the red glass box. "Do you want to smash the glass?"

"You smash the glass" said Remus.

"Come on, just smash the glass" Sirius tried to force the ax on Remus, who kept refusing it.

"It's fine. You smash it"  
"_Just _smash the bloody glass"  
"_You _smash it"

Irritation started to grow high in both of them and the zombies started to get within brain-groping distance, so to keep them at a safe distance did Sirius sacrifice his recreational floo powder by spreading it in a thin line across the floor. Then Remus set fire to it. Floo powder was generally known for having a long burning time, but because the line had been fairly thin, they estimated that they probably didn't have more than a 15 minutes worth of fussing time. Fortunately Sirius had been wrong when he had thought he was out of cigarettes.  
"You mean you would much rather have zombies feasting on your precious brain than smashing the glass?" he asked, lighting the surprise fag in the wall of fire. "What's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with you? Why can't you smash it?"

"If it said: 'In case of emergency, read this book', you wouldn't have been this passive aggressively resistant. And if you really want to prove me wrong, just smash the glass"

"I don't have to prove anything"

"Oh dear…" Sirius lowered the ax. "And you're supposed to be the mature one…"

"Why must you argue at a time like this?" Trying to not sound vexed began to feel like a struggle. "Just smash the glass and fuss later!"

"If you don't smash it now, you will just put off smashing it and then you will be zombie food, along with me. Do you really want me to be zombie food?"

"No I want you to just smash the glass"

"Well I won't"

"Then I'll just go wait inside a coffin"

"If you would rather go lie in a coffin than smash glass, then you _really _need to smash some glass"

"_If you'd rather push my buttons at a time like this than smash the glass then you need to grow up!"_

The temperature dropped several degrees. Even the flames went from blue to red. Remus sat down on the floor to try and do some homework he had brought along with him, but the guilt robbed him of all ability to concentrate.

Sirius blew a ring. "Feel better?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it"

"If you want my forgiveness, you know what to do" Sirius reached him the axe. Remus sighed pleadingly.

"I don't _want _to. Why can't you just drop it?"

"Because you're cross I don't know how else to make you not-cross"

"You could smash the glass"

The blasting heat from the roaring flames had evolved into a cozy fire.

"Are you mad about the poltergeist?" Sirius tried.

"No"

"Are you suuuuure? The cat, then? Or for all the times I've read your dream journal? Or spiked your tea? Or some of the bawdier cover lies I've made up for you with the really explicit details?"

Although still cross (possibly even more cross), at least the guilt was no longer around to prevent the homework for next month from being done.

"Now I remember" said Remus. "It's because I'm such a pushover. But that's not your fault"

"That's true. Well, stop being a pushover then"

"If you have some practical advice on how to not be a pushover, I'd love for you to share them"

"Certainly I do" Sirius joined him on the floor. "Do what you want to do, not what other people want you to do"

"That's a sure way to get a guilt trip from your mum"

"If you care so much what your mum thinks and what McGonagall thinks, why is the dorm still a zoo of cupboards?"

"I don't _know. _I guess… " Telling somebody something personal he had never told anybody felt so awkward and he kept wondering if perhaps it was better to simply not to "I like to surround myself with them because…" It wasn't too late to say something completely different and not personal. "They don't make me feel so out of place. I've promised time and time again that I won't break another rule and I _know _it's wrong but sometimes I just forget that I don't go to school because I'm obliged to or it's my right, but because I'm merely allowed as if by some kind of mercy and only on the one condition that I gratefully pretend I'm just like everybody else by being a picture perfect do-gooder. And then, when I pretend I'm like everybody else, why am I treated like I'm different? I'm constantly conflicted and it _drives _me _crazy!_" Woops. He wished he had shut his mouth shut after all. Why couldn't he just have shut his mouth shut? This was too weird.

The constantly moaning zombies were no longer staring stupidly at the crackling fire and began sticking their fingers in it.

"Well _there's _a surprise" said Sirius after a very brief moment of thought. "You're a hopeless people-pleaser; of _course _you're constantly conflicted. For some reason you think you have to be an exemplary son, exemplary student, exemplary friend, exemplary prefect, exemplary werewolf, exemplary neurotic etcetera, etcetera and if you're not exemplary in some field it's _good bye cruel world, _and being exemplary in _all _those fields is just not doable"

"That's not true. I just want to be good enough"

"Yeah. And you're idea of 'good enough' is being perfect and super nice and never screwing up. You may pretend you're normal, but perfection _isn't _normal. You have to stop trying to please everybody if you don't want to go madder"

It was at this moment, when the fire started to die out, that the zombies realized that they could pass through it unharmed. The lads practically bounced to their feet.

"Rock, scissors and paper it is" said Sirius, weighing the ax.

"Best of five"

"Three"

They rushed through the decision making ritual as if they were high on caffeine. The results were even after the first two times and they had to move to the corner because the zombies had gotten within touching distance. Halfway through the last and deciding game, made difficult because groping zombie fingers were very distracting, the revenants suddenly vanished entirely, as if the ground sucked them in as the wall of fire crackled to its death. So now that the emergency was over and Sirius won the last game, Remus smashed the glass at last un-reluctantly because the need to express repressed frustration had gone anyway.

The wall to the left of the exit opened up like sliding doors, revealing the lab. And there was James coming down from a ladder after having beheaded the zombie with another, identical ax.

"You may now shower me with praise" he said, kicking the fallen head their way as if it was a football.

"Took you long enough" Stepping on the head that came rolling his way, Sirius picked it up.

"Hopefully this lamp can replace your great aunts' lamp" Remus gave the zip lock bag to Peter.

"I will have to ask her at the next séance" Peter replied.

"I asked the elf so many questions, but I forgot to ask who the zombie was" said James, leaving the ax behind on a counter as they all ventured back into the ominous corridors.

When they came out of the secret door and were back in the room with the coffin, they were met by a small group of adversarial Hufflepuffs, all of which held their wands in duel position.

"Hand over the lamp!" demanded the toad-faced girl.

Even if he hadn't had a wand pointed at his throat, Peter would still have obliged. The chubby lad who took photos for the school paper whispered something in Skeeter's ear.

"You'll never beat us in the international treasure punt!" she said cockily. "Hunt"

Then the Hufflepuffs just stood there, staring challengingly and waiting for the lads to try something, but the lads just thought that dueling Hufflepuffs was almost as undignified as dueling girls, and the only thing that kept them from simply carrying on their merry way to the wine cellar was the pair of Ravenclaws that suddenly joined the growing gathering.

"Not so fast!" said Blondie, striding up to toad face and flashing a smile. "Just hand over the lamp" he said sweetly.

"Ok!" Toad face was ready to hand it over before he had even finished the sentence, but was stopped by Dung who snatched it from her.

"You'll never get this!" he yelled and tried to run, but was tripped over. Still gripping the lamp tightly as if he was clinging to dear life, he turned over on his back. The other blonde Ravenclaw stepped over him, weighing a glass jar of nothing threateningly.

"Just give us the lamp" said Lovegood.

"Never!"  
"If you don't you will be covered head to toe with _this!"  
_Waving away a swarm of flies, Dung squinted, trying to see what was in the jar.

"Did that jar use to contain candy but you ate it all in your sleep?"

"_That's _it" Lovegood, who went by Lovebad when he was annoyed at people dissing his Nargles by saying they weren't real, unscrewed the lid and poured all of the seeming nothingness over Dung, who shrieked and squirmed in disgust.

"What is that? What is that? Make it go away! Blegh!"

"And you call yourselves _smart!" _ came a voice with particularly sinister tone that made hairs curl. Everybody turned around. Nobody had seen the Slytherins' arrive. They insisted they were such non-conformist misfits and yet they loved to match each other, this time in green t-shirts that had _Team Death Finders _printed on them and white masks they had made themselves from plaster and balloons.

"If you want something from a _dumb _Hufflepuff" the boy continued as he too stepped over Dung, who was still lying on the floor, spitting Nargles and hugging the lamp, and pointed his wand at him. "Hand it over"  
"Never!" Dung still refused stubbornly.

"Hand it over or _die!"_

"OK here!" Dung threw the zip lock back to the boy that had threatened to take his life. The masked Slytherin took a moment to feel the weight, finding it surprisingly heavy.

"Well, cheers" he said and turned to leave, and his fellow Death Finders with him.

"All the lamps in the world couldn't make you win the international treasure hunt!" spat toad face.

"All the lamps in the world couldn't assure you victory because you're too stupid to know how to use them" Since all the present Slytherins looked the same, trying to differentiate them was pointless. Where everybody else were concerned, they ought as well just have been one person doing all the talking, although this time it was a different one judging from the sound of his squeaky voice.

"Ugh, you Slytherins are the _worst!" _said Blondie. "Prancing around, pretending you're the 'smart ones', when everybody knows _we're _ the smart ones, bloody inbreeds the lot of you!"

"Ravenclaw may be the 'smart ones', but you two are definitely not the 'smart ones'"

"Smarter than you, you want some of this?" Lovegood raised the jar threateningly. Where everybody else was concerned, he could be faking it, since he had been pouring it all over Dung just a minute ago. But whether or not he was faking it or not did not interest the lads from the house of magical brawns, and because they felt like their presence wasn't really needed here since the others were doing a pretty good job stirring up uproar on their own, they decided that now was the time to leave Do Not Enter Village. They had gotten what they had come for, and although they had also lost it they could always get it back some other time when they were rested and bored.

"I can see why Grizelda Hobgoblin went on holiday" said James as he and the others came down the stairs to the main hall.

"She's on holiday?" Remus asked.

"Or, maybe she's 'on holiday'"

"What does 'on holiday' mean?" Sirius asked "Because it sounds like it has to do with drugs"

"The elf said she faked her death and went on holiday" said James. "but… Maybe it's like when your parents tell you your dog is on a farm somewhere, when in actuality it was taken to the vet to be ruthlessly murdered"

"Or they tell you it was taken to the vet to be ruthlessly murdered, when in actuality it's on a farm somewhere"

They entered the drawing room, took whatever valuables they could find and where just about to hop into the fire place when it cracked.

Out stepped a pudgy witch in her mid 50's with a face covered in warts and wearing a large back pack, especially designed to fit hunches. They stared at her and she stared at them.


	15. Cake

The Teapot of the Orient

Part 15

"And not only did you leave Hogwarts without permission to break into a house to steal things" said McGonagall, refilling her mug of gin. "You also left Hogwarts without permission to break into a house to steal things"

Somehow McGonagall always made brilliant plans that made sense at the time sound less brilliant and more nonsensical, and she had a tendency to oversimplify.

"We also kind of saved a town I think" said James. "Or groundwork was made, at the very least"

"Yeah you have to look at the positive stuff, too" said Sirius.

McGonagall opened her top drawer and took out a bunch of blood red envelopes.

"That's a level 10 howler to your mothers" she counted four howlers from the bunch. Peter gasped, trembling with fear in his seat. "Although I don't see the point because I don't think your parents bother opening any mail from Hogwarts anymore. "'_My boy is an angel, he would never put Itchy Bitsy Spiders in the detergent. You must have gotten the wrong one!' _HA! Feels like yesterday"

She sighed nostalgically and after having scribbled on the howlers with her special shouting ink, she took a pair of dice from a bowl and rolled them. They came out a 3 and a 5. "350 points from Gryffindor each"

The house point counter on the shelf started whistling like a tea pot and the numbers blinked. McGonagall got up from her chair and stuck her head through the door into the hall outside.

"It's doing it again!" she yelled, awaited answer and then yelled: "Ok" and closed the door again, muttering about how those budget house point keepers never could handle any numbers less than -999.

"I'll have to decide your detention later" she said when she had sat down again. "First I have to see if you have any time available. I think some of you I won't say any names but I will point" she needed both her index fingers for simultaneous pointing. "already have a number of clashing detention hours for the next 20 years. To be fair, some professors don't bother to check with the detention files before assigning the hours" She scribbled some in a notebook. "Now, before I dismiss you, I will ask you one last time; do you still have any loot on you?"

They lads shook their heads with varying degrees of remorse and honesty, but McGonagall's piercing stare remained until Sirius reached into his pockets and threw a locket across the desk. Opening it, a batch of catnip fell onto her desk and knee and not knowing at first what it was, she took a whiff off it. Then another. Then another.

"Excuse me while I" She collected all the catnip in a bunch and pressed it to her face and inhaled deeply. "While I" Inhale. "You're dismissed" Then she ran through the wall to her left into her chamber.

Sirius grabbed the possessed treasure chest that sat on the desk.

"If drugging a professor won't get you kicked for good, I don't know what will" said Remus.

"It hasn't before"

"But people actually like McGonagall. I thought you did too, inappropriately"

"She liked it, didn't she?"

"I was honestly uncomfortable witnessing that" said James. "But the ends justify the means"

"And I'm uncomfortable when you rub your head against trees, but you don't hear me complaining"

"Yes I do"

And so when they returned to their dorm, they found they had an uninvited visitor going through their possessions. Dung turned at the sound of their arrival and hid his ring decorated hands behind his back.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"Try that cupboard over there" Sirius tossed the possessed treasure on his bed and picked up some unfinished crosswords. "Make sure to think happy thoughts"

"Lay off the cupboards" Remus cast some extra layers of chains on the cupboard. "Forget the lamp, it's not yours"

So Dung pointed his beech, 9 inches, gremlin mole at Peter. "Tell me where it is"

Peter dug in his pockets and handed over the lamp.

"You don't need the lamp to win that treasure thing" said Remus, in the mood of settling things peacefully for a change.

"Well" Dung looked down at his feet. "It's not really about the lamp anymore, is it?"

"Isn't it?"

"Maybe I just pretend I need it, for strategy. You're not the only one who fakes things"

"Oh, _that_. That was just… Me taking out some issues on you. I never faked anything. You were great. At hide and seek"

Dung scraped his shoes against the floor modestly. "You're not just saying that?"

"I'd let you have that pot of gold if I could find it"

"I might have… given it to a leprechaun. They can really torture you horribly if they want to!"

"Is that why you're so unusually fragrant and shaven?" James asked, combing out the tangled, extra-fine twigs of his Route 66.

"People _drown_ in bath tubs!" Dung returned the lamp, but took the possessed treasure chest and ran out of the dorm with it.

"Wait you'll need this" Sirius rand after him with the crow bar.

Peter looked around for a good place to hide the lamp.

"I should probably hide it on my own" he said.

"You do that" said Remus and Peter left the dorm before Sirius returned.

"Where's the lamp?" he asked, looking about himself.

"My bet is the root cellar behind the kitchen" said James.

"The kitchen, you say… Well, I overheard that today is professor Retsinis' death day and he specifically requested a devils' food cake… And I'm not much for chocolate but ever since you brought up cake I've sort of wanted cake. If I wasn't so responsible I'd think I was pregnant"

"Well… We _did _miss dinner"

And everybody knew Retsinis struggled with weight problems so they were really doing him a favour.


End file.
